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@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Cami Pontarelli 5-29-15
Today began with open questions about our upcoming creative projects. Mrs. Wray reminded us that along with the artistic piece, we must include a 1/2 to 1 page statement of our work's purpose.
Next, we went over out schedule for the next few class periods. Here's a quick overview:
TUES 6/2: TOTC Creative Projects due, gallery walk, begin exam review
THURS 6/4: Vocab final day! Final lit term due (late lit terms 1/2 credit), exam review
WED 6/10: FINAL EXAM DAY! Scantron and esssay, scantron about TOTC. There is a study guide posted on the wiki, tomes collected at beginning of exam
After we discussed our (very hectic) schedule, we wrote Tome #40, where we reacted to the end of TOTC. (Sydney Carton broke my heart).
While we sat inside and discussed heroic sacrifice, love, revolution, and general sadness, we could hear all the laughter and joy coming from the garden party outside of our window. I think we were all jealous.
We began our discussion about Sydney Carton, and people brought up points such as "it was the best ending ever written", it "shows hope for humanity", "i liked the insertion of the peasant woman", it "tied together the theme of relationships and people coming together", and how "there will always be good and evil in the world". However, that's as far as we got because then: FIRE DRILL.
We spent the next half an hour standing outside in the bright, hot sun and missed the entire rest of class. It was great.
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Isabelle Cullen 5-21-15
Good Evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is your scribe writing and tonight, we are going to take a look at what happened today in Sophomore Honors English. Make some noise!!!
.... Maybe not. Today, as usual, we all encountered the lock door. Once we entered the classroom and settled in for the next hour and a half, Mrs. Wray gave her condolences to the Girl's Lacrosse Team. Though we lost, everyone, especially Lauren speeding up and down the field, gave it their all until the final buzzer. Mrs. Wray did not attend the game but instead tried to follow it live on Twitter. Due to a misunderstanding of an article from last year's championship, Mrs.Wray thought we had won.... *Sigh*. We have another contender heading out for a state title. Good luck Katy at State this weekend for the 4x4 and the 800!!! Next, Mrs. Wray gave us a surprise. we all dread them and stress out over them... A QUOTE QUIZZY!!!! Don't worry. It was not worth very much and will not hurt your grade drastically. After we discussed our Quizzy, the last three motif groups presented their slideshows. The three motif power points will be posted up online but for the purpose of scribing, I will tell you a brief bit about each one. First up, was the motif of Animals. Their claim stated that they are symbolic for the disparity and fighting amongst the classes in France. Next was vengeance and their claim is escaping my groggy memory.... as is the next group, doubles, and their claim... Excuse my poor exhausted memory. After watching some great motif presentations, we started our first literary discussion of TOTC. We discussed the shifting gender dynamics, women in power, the secrets of Dr.Manette, and the lack of trust throughout the book. I liked Mark's comment the most ash eh compared Mr.Carton to Snape. Ah, Snape. The most hated and loved character of Harry Potter. Class concluded and due to Smarter Balance, Mrs. Wray will not be here on Wednesday. Pages for homework will be posted on the wiki.
Enjoy your sleep this weekend, everyone. And enjoy your puppy and all the duties that come with her, Mrs. Wray!
Thursday nights. They are the best of times, they are the worst of times.
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May 19. Or something. Who knows. I'm so stressed I've stopped perceiving time in a linear fashion! At least I got my dialectical journals done.
Meg Smith
We opened class with a discussion on the ease of MP3 essay comments (be sure to listen to them, folks!) and comments on stone ground mustard. Is regular mustard just not the same? Do the stones add flavor? What even is mustard? We just don’t know. After the MP3/Mustard debacle, Ms. Wray stamped our dialectical journal entries as we discussed them with those around us. If there’s one thing we all can agree on, Honors English has taught us to write quick and intelligent-sounding analyses for just about anything. Then, we had two in-class motif presentations. The first one, which focused on crowds and the simultaneous loss of and persistence of individuality, had many layers of analysis. It was certainly not an ogreish presentation, and was presented by the all-stars Mark, Drew, Isabelle, and Katherine. The second one focused on the dualities of light and dark as well as the source of hope. This was presented by Nic, Jinghui, Tuesday, and Katy H. Afterwards, we took out our tomes and began work on Tome 39 which is all about Dickensian Cinema: We created a tableau for our scene and focused on repetition and detail. Each tableau was interesting and dynamic. Morgan stood on a table. I have a note here about banging on a white board but I don’t remember what that’s about. Lost to the depths of memory, I guess. “Time isn’t real. Nothing is verifiable. The moon has flesh. Peace.” --Meg
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Friday, May 15th, 2015 Anika Todt
Today began with a small class scandal, in which Jinghui was busted for attempting to gain additional extra credit points by putting his phone, and his phone case up in the front of the classroom. Soon after, we launched into a lively class discussion about Nora's perfume, which apparently smelled fruity. Ms. Wray then accused us of rearranging the desks, though I am unable to confirm, since I have a tendency to arrive just before the bell.
We then kick started the class with a pop quiz! Though it wasn't exactly related to any literary topics I know of. (Then again, I suppose you could say it falls under coming of age, which is rather prevalent in literature.)
Soon after turning in the said quiz, Ms. Wray proceeded to make some clarifications about our tomes. For those that still may be a bit lost:
Tome #33 is the Best of Times，Worst of Times paragraph
Tome #34 is Group Work I
Tome #35 is the Active Reading/Cause and Effect response
Tome #36 is the Tome Discussion Topics
Tome #37 is the two Dialectical Journals we completed for pages 135-192
and Tome #38 is the Favorite Line reflection from the first reading (we forgot to include it earlier）.
After catching up on the tomes, we moved into small groups, and discussed our dialectical journals and Ms. Wray came around and stamped our journals. Ms. Wray also clarified that we should always bring our Tomes to class. While we discussed our observations of the text, Ms. Wray wheeled in the iPads, and we split up yet again to work on creating PowerPoints for our various motifs. We spent most of the rest of the class working on these presentations, since they took longer than expected. Initially we planned to leave time for silent reading but, as usual, we just didn't have the time.
Toward the end of class, there was enough time for two groups to present, while the rest of the presentations were postponed to next class. Following these presentations, Ms. Wray took the time to introduce our Tale of Two Cities project, which is fairly open ended. Make sure to get a handout from her next class if you were absent.
Dies Lunae, a. d. V Id Mai MMXV (Monday, May 11th, 2015) Morgan N. Lloyd I
Today, Ms. Wray was absent, and I quickly jumped at the chance to get one more scribe in this year. And so, we come to the likely conclusion of my scribing saga. It’s been a good ride, wouldn’t you say?
Our substitute was no unfamiliar face, but was instead Ms. Rathbun (really hope I got the spelling right), who is beginning to seem like a regular English teacher here. She started the class with the poem “Black Sea”, by Mark Strand, which is worth checking out if you weren’t there. After the usual round of snaps, we were then reminded that we had a quote identification quiz on the first section of Tale of Two Cities. This forced us to rack our brains to remember who was speaking to whom, where, and with what significance. I just put down Monsieur for everything, because there’s so many Monsieurs in this book I knew I had a pretty good chance of getting it right. There were four quotes, but to the surprise of many we only had to do two, so it wasn’t altogether too onerous.
Following that we were broken into groups and assigned one of seven topics to write about, for Tome 35. After a good amount of time for writing, we gathered together and shared our observations. This led to each group sharing their findings with the class. After this interesting discussion, we moved onto an activity less academic and more artistic in nature; creating a poster for a character in (what else) Tale of Two Cities. This took the rest of the class, as we tried to ferret out who had artistic talent amongst us and thought hard over which color would best suit our respective personages. Homework is to do some work on said project, complete Lit Term 37 before the close of the week, and finish Book the Second before the same Friday.
Today, we started out with several classmates performing their memorized poems. Serena gave an awesome poem with plenty of emotion and hand gestures. Nora was slightly intimidated by this, but she performed equally as amazing with her own poem. Nic brought a science fiction poem of his own creation, and Katherine went up to recite a Maya Angelou poem. There was a small discussion about what the title of the first book in the Tale of Two Cities meant, and we talked about why we did or didn't like Dickens' writing style. Mark made the comparison between Dickens' work and the work of a panicked Honors English student. Then, we took the time to do a short tome in which we chose our favorite sentence from the first book and explained why it is so wonderful. That would be tome number 34. Afterwards, we played an extremely fun game in which we had to remember the significance random things from the book. We ended the class by reading through the Wine scene at the beginning of chapter five, and the few paragraphs at the beginning of chapter three on page 15.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Monday, April 27, 2015 Sophie Weigel
We started off class with the poem Desire by Eamon Grennan. It portrayed a theme I think we can all relate to. Some days, (esp. Mondays) we all just feel like bees hitting against the glass. Next we took the vocab #15 quiz. Afterwards, we got right into peer revisions with a partner in which we went over either a draft or an outline, depending on where you're at in the writing process of the Macbeth essay. We highlighted and made comments on the paper and then discussed. Afterwards, we went to the library and checked out A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, the new novel we will be reading! We came back to the classroom and then went over some reviews and tips to keep in mind while reading the book. Many liked this novel, but it was of the majority opinion that this is a challenging read. Sparknotes and shmoop are both helpful resources to check out after reading, for clarification. Next we went over some basic information and facts about Dickens and the novel, like the time period and the French Revolution. Near the end of class, we got a list of some of the characters and descriptions of them that we'll meet in the novel. We also got a study guide questions hand out for book 1. The novel is divided into three books. Before class got out, we started to read chapter one.
Homework
Final draft of Macbeth Essay due Friday
Vocab sentences #16
Read "Outline of the Revolution" and annotate
Read Book 1, Chapter 1 ("The Period") answer the questions
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Thursday, April 23, 2015 Jinghui Lou
Who reads these?
Today we shared our Independent Reading Creative Projects to the class, including but not limited to:
- Sophie's song, where the singing was so amazing that I forgot the book title it was responding to.
- Jessica's "Gone Girl" clues, which I think relate to the movie.
- Nic's cool astronaut drawing, which involves an astronaut, in space!
- Milo's intense castle drawing in response to "Crispin" by Avi.
- Kamala's nesting dolls to show the different phases of some characters in "Crime and Punishment".
- Nora's carousel drawing for "Catcher in the Rye", where the golden ring is the symbol of maturity, and some dude has to let Phoebe reach for one.
- Other stuff.
And then a Macbeth Discussion, where people thought about:
- Why was the ending brief, but Macbeth's rise to power so long? (Kinda reminds me of that expected "showdown" between Chirag and that other guy in "No Country for Old Men". There is no showdown. The fact you expected one shows how shallow you are.)
- Lady Macbeth not being mentioned enough in the end? (Maybe by saying she was out of the picture, Macbeth did not have anyone to look up to for security. Hence his doom.)
- Why did Macbeth die honorably for all the chaos he created? (The goal wasn't humiliation. It was to reclaim Scotland. Why is a beheading considered honorable?)
- Witches are gods who use humans as playthings.
- Was Macbeth initially good, before King Duncan's murder?
- Was it ambition, or a hope for security that pushed Macbeth to do what he did?
- A circle of violence for the throne: Will there ever be peace?
- If one acts with an evil intent, he is evil. If he is forced, is he still evil? Does one know he is evil?
- Macbeth never was able to fit into his new clothes / his role.
- How every guy wants to be like Macduff, and how every girl names their vibrators after him.
- Future of Scotland not being totally perfect, as everyone put all their hate into Macbeth. A temporary solution?
<--- Homework: Refer to "10H Homework" on side bar.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Tuesday, April 21, 2015 Steve Dobrioglo
Right after the first lunch bell rung most of the class ran into the classroom... Just kidding! We were locked out, but we still had a lot of fun out in the hallway. All of the AP Euro kids panicked over their next test (two essays in one class period? That's bananas!), everyone else did their own thing, and eventually we were let into the room. From there, we all sat down and started our Individual Reading Project prompt responses... Just kidding! We had to turn in our Macbeth essay first, but after that we were able to start our prompts. After Jinghui bragged about how proud he was about his in-depth analysis of his novel, we had to write two one-page responses to a series of prompts we were given. For those unfortunate ones that weren't at class here are the prompts:
1. Identify the main theme of the novel. What message does the author want the reader to understand about the theme?
2. Write the last sentence of the novel. Is this sentence appropriate and effective as the last sentence of your book? Why or why not?
3. Identify and explain if the novel is based on the workings of the head (meant to make you think) or the workings of the heart (meant to affect you emotionally).
4. Comment on the writer's style. What things do you notice about the author's writing that is interesting or sets him or her apart?
5. Write about how you fit into the story. Are there characters or situations that relate to your own experiences? In what way does this novel relate to you as an individual?
After a little more than twenty minutes (the class demanded an extra eight minutes to finish up), we all got up and went to the English Lab. In there ,we went with our partners from last class and we all performed our awesome physical-interpretations-of-the-lines of the monologue. Everyone was great, however Kaity cheated because she had Mrs. Wray as a partner. After the first round, when Max viciously ripped my paper from my hands like a true Macbeth-ian, we acted out our lines once more, but a little faster and more dramatic. Finally, we had to do it one more time, except we had to find a way to physically connect ourselves to the last pair. That was interesting as we found out that we formed a long and extended chain, which was different than previous classes physical interpretations. Then we left, but some people forgot their phones and had to pick them up after school.
Homework:
Vocab Sentence Quiz
Hard Copy of Macbeth Essay Outline
Final Discussion next class, so prepare
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Monday, April 13, 2015 Drew Vogelsang
We started off the class by going over information about the AP English, which will be happening next class (4/15). Mrs. Wray encourages all of us to take it so that we still have the opportunity to take the class, even if aren't planning on it right now. We then took three relaxing deep breaths, before looking over the schedule for the next couple weeks:
Monday 4/13: act IV discussion Wednesday 4/15: junior AP entrance exam Friday 4/17: Act V discussion/activity Tuesday 4/21: Ind. Novel Creative Project (bring in book) and written response. Macbeth thesis work time and final discussion. Sharing of motif slideshows. Thursday 4/23: outline of Macbeth essay due. Begin TOTC. Monday 4/27: draft #1 of Macbeth essay due Wednesday 4/29: final draft of Macbeth essay
Mrs. Wray then talked to us about Mandalas, which she really enjoys from House of Cards. They are a circular artwork, containing a center image with many symbolic symbols expanding from the sides. She also told us that if anybody is doing a show project (song, slideshow, video, etc.) they will have to present it to the class. There is also still plenty of time to memorize a poem for extra credit, which will be due on the last week of April!
We then had a silent discussion about Act 4 of Macbeth where we responded to prompts of pieces of paper spread out around the room. The class went over many ideas including:
Macbeth being compared to a lamb, mindlessly following his own actions (Foreshadowing)
Lady Macduff's conversation with her son (Opposite Shifting Moods)
The messages from the witches stew and predictions such as Macbeth dying in battle ("armed head") and the witches possibly killing Macbeth (no mother born)
4/9/15
Jessica Seropian
Today was definitely a Thursday. The mood in the room was one of "why can't the week just be over?" At least that's how I felt... Anyways, onto the scribe notes!
After turning in our list 15 vocab sentences and Lit Terms, we huddled into our motif groups to discuss the examples and importance of each motif in Macbeth. We also had to come up with a preliminary claim/thesis for each motif. Don't worry though, our essay will not be about the motifs, and the essay is a progress piece (three cheers for NOT having to do it in class!).
Then, the last presentation was given about Act 3 by the insanely large group of people who were all absent on Tuesday. Max, Sophie, Isabelle, Drew, Cami, and Nora did a wonderful job. :)
In their presentation someone (I believe it was Drew, but I could be wrong...) brought up lines 168-170 in Act 3, Scene 4. Those lines are as follows:
"I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er."
We discussed the importance of these lines and Max decided to compare crossing the river to picking up poop with his bare hands (Sophie told him to go find a shovel, but Max was insistent on using his hands).
Some of the points brought up were:
The river represents the divide between good and evil.
Macbeth has already waded into the river; no matter where he goes, he will be covered in blood.
Macbeth is deciding to go to the "evil" side of the river.
After that discussion, talked about Scenes 3.5 and 3.6. Some points of discussion:
3.5:
Did Shakespeare write this scene?
Many said "no" due to the fact that only one witch has lines and the use of song at the end of the scene.
What is the plan that Hecate comes up with?
She wants to screw with Macbeth even more.
3.6
Lennox's double talk
The distrust in the kingdom
Nobody could trust one another.
We will see a scene in Act 4 (can't remember which one) in which Macduff tricks Malcolm to see if he is trustworthy.
After that we started to read 4.1 until the bell.
HOMEWORK:
Read all of Act 4
Look at the essay prompt on the wiki and just give it some thought
READ YOUR INDEPENDENT NOVELS. PROJECT DUE DATE IS NEXT FRIDAY 4/17
Extra credit poems?
Have a good weekend everyone!
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4/7/15 (Sorry this is so late!)
Quincy Hyun
Greetings, measly earthlings. It is I, Commander Yorbag Zuppsniffer from Planet Garbotron. I have come to take over your puny, pathetic planet, and nothing can stop me. Not your CIA, your FBA, your NSA, your CBS, your LOL...nothing! My first order of business is to eliminate all the frogs of your ecosystem–
*rides in on a leashed (shirtless) Tom Hiddleston and knocks out Barfbag Buttsniffer with a swift kick to the noggin*
Hi-yah! Take that, strange space scum! Although your English was quite good, I must protect our sticky, ribbit-y little friends from extinction, so now your booty is banished to the pits of helalalabooo (cursing is bad.)
*orders Tom to take Barfbag Buttsniffer to the gates of Tartarus* And say hello to Tiresias for me!
(That's right. I'm on a first-name basis with Tom. AND I made an "Odysseus" reference. I'm on fiyah today. *hissing sound*)
Anyway, now that I've officially saved Mr. Frog and his expansive family from destruction, let's proceed with the scribe notes.
'Twas a melancholy start to our day, as Max forlornly grieved about the lack of comments on his Living History paper, which he submitted rather late. Mrs. Wray then feigned shock and sympathy–I think we all know that she secretly has it out for Max–and promised to check her email. I guess we can all give her a break, as her 80-something juniors are also sharing their papers with her. (Please don't read that as the juniors are 80 years old.)
Morgan then lifted up all our spirits with the exciting news of his drive through the Salinas Valley, which we were very thoroughly introduced to by a certain Mr. Steinbeck. Seriously though, he spends like half the book praising its rivers and hills and whatnot. Is there a word for a landscape fetish? Because Mr. Steinbeck, well...yeah. Unfortunately, Morgan's phone died, so he couldn't take pictures, though I'm sure we all have enough imagery of the place to last us a lifetime.
Next, Mrs. Wray revealed her late-night escapades on the Wiki, and said she noticed several people who were up at a time they shouldn't be up adding their comments to the discussion page and submitting their papers (ahem, Tuesday and Isabelle.) Don't worry, anonymous friends (TUESDAY AND ISABELLE!!!!!,) we still love you. <3
Then, to kick off the official academic schedule, Mrs. Wray read the beautiful poem "Opals" by Robin Becker. Following that, we were handed a worksheet designed to help us reflect on our Living History papers. During this time, Mrs. Wray gushed to us about how her new dog was "so cute!" But among her frenetic grading, commenting, teaching, and home life patterns, she's a bit too occupied for a pet at the moment, so her mom is taking care of the dog for the first 8 weeks.
After that, an enthralling announcement was made! The Oregon Writing Festival was open for submission! Even though we only had two days to write an application letter and choose a 2-page piece of our writing to submit, we were all jumping for joy! Or at least I was. C'mon guys, writing is fun! (And if you don't agree, just say yes because chances are, Mrs. Wray is reading this.) I mean, I totally didn't write my application letter in the thirty minutes before I left for school. Nope.
But that's neither here nor there. (Kudos to Mrs. Wolfe-Rocca for that saying! Oh, and by the way Mrs. Wray, Mrs. Wolfe says you're hot.) The guest speaker this year is going to be April Henry, the author of "Body in the Woods" and "Girl, Stolen". We briefly went over the location (PSU) and schedule of the festival. There's going to be workshops, lectures, sharing your work, and a lunch break! For those that submitted, keep your fingers crossed! And for those that didn't, I'd really recommend trying next year. It's a blast, and it's a great experience you'll remember forever.
Suddenly, the door opened to expose two students, come to talk to Mrs. Wray about chaperoning for prom. Apparently, Mrs. Wray couldn't provide a sufficient answer, as they left with an ominous threat of "We know where you are." Spooky. Then, we passed back some papers.
Personally, it was one of my favorite English days, due to what we did next: Sharing our Living History papers! Roughly half the class read aloud their favorite scene, and they were all magnificent. Despite our antics, we truly are a group of wonderful thinkers and writers. Hats off to us! And also hats off to our past English teachers and all the books we've read for cultivating our passion and skills. Yay!
I actually kept track of who read and the different subjects, but it's extremely vague and might not be too accurate. I was too distracted appreciating everyone's stories. :) Feel free to edit and add more information.
Sarah; Gaza
Katherine; Crossing Rubicon. Roman soldier
Max; Trung Sisters' Rebellion. Heavy sneezing
Mark; Roaring Twenties. Louis Armstrong
Cami; San Francisco. Journalist
Nic; Space. Americans to the moon
Jessica; Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius
Meg; Chernobyl Disaster
Serena; Nanking Massacre
Morgan; Ukraine
Isabelle; Virginia Tech Massacre
Lauren; Miracle on Ice
We shared up to the end of class, and yes, there was homework, but since Thursday's class is already over, I see no reason to list it. Unless we all find a machine that can transport us back to Wednesday night. But if that happened, I'm pretty sure that English homework would be the last of our concerns. (Not that English homework isn't important. It is. Really. Suuuuuuuper important. Heh.)
By the way, I wrote this on Friday, but I fell asleep and then my computer restarted. I was just about to fling myself off my front porch when this blessed, lovely little website had a popup that said "We've recovered an unsaved draft. Edit from this draft?" and I howled for joy and promised to adopt 279 stray iguanas when I grew older––
MWAHAHA! I AM BACK! YOU THOUGHT YOU GOT RID OF ME, BUT HERE I AM! IN THE FLESH! ALIVE! RETURNED FROM THE DEAD! AND NOW, SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR SLIMY AQUATIC COMPANIONS––
*Suddenly, a garbled rumbling sound echoes from the distant hills. Of the Salinas Valley. John Steinbeck rides in on a massive gray frog. 50 shades of gr––erm, frogs. Multitudes of smaller frogs follow, bellowing battle cries. They each carry toothpicks. They sweep in, surrounding Barfbag Buttsniffer, and he desperately tries to fight them off. But it's no use. He is no match for their amphibious powers. A random fire starts. A car drops from the sky. It's a Michael Bay film.*
CURSE YOU, DEVIL FROGS!
*When the smoke clears, all that's left is a bloody finger.*
Nah, I'm just kidding. It's a french fry with ketchup. Some of the frogs have McDonald's addictions. The end.
Good Afternoon! So today's… well yesterday's class was filled with fun (as usual) so if you missed it too bad for you.
Did you know April is National Poetry Month? It is, and Ms. Wray of offering extra credit. If you go to poetry.org and memorize a poem that has a minimum of 20 lines then present it to the class by the last week of April then you will get extra credit. And the answer is no, overachievers - if the poem is over 20 lines you don't get more extra credit. But even if you don't get more extra credit choir peoples, it would still be pretty cool if you sang "Little Tree" for the class (You can get a high five from me if that makes you feel better)
The poem for the day was "Risk" by Anais Nin.
Then the day came
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to blossom
After the poem of the day, Jinghui, Jenny, and Kamala shared their living history stories. All of them were excellent. I can't wait to read the rest of them. One of my favorite sentence fragments from Jinghui's story was "crescendo of doom." Jenny's metaphor of the board game weaved into her conclusion was amazing. Kamala's scenery description as quoted from someone in the class (can't remember who though, sorry!) "was something out of a movie."
Once all the stories were read, we moved into discussion about Macbeth Act II and III. (This section was supposed to come out in more of an outline form than bulleted… Alas! That didn't happen as you can see)
- Macbeth admitting to killing the guards out of love for Duncan is not a good cover
- Laying it on too thick
- Not lying low
- Perhaps trying to convince himself that he's not guilty
- Comparison to Romeo in the heat of the moment - Shakespeare has theme of love
- Banquo's reaction - Is he suspicious of Macbeth?
- General consensus, yes suspicious
- Was there when witches made prophecy
- Lady Macbeth
- Faint after Macbeth's stirring speech of his love was intentional
- Is she more bad than Macbeth
- some say more dangerous
- some say more bad
- some ask what truly defined as bad
- Max (I think it was) had a good quote "I don't like brands of good and evil"
After discussion there were twenty minutes remaining in which we used that time to break up into groups and prepare for a presentation we are giving to the class next time we meet regarding Act III. We are supposed to create a powerpoint, act out a short part of the section you were assigned, explain the significance, pick out specifically 3 -5 quotes and explain the significance of that, and prepare one question for the class. Be sure to create your powerpoint on google docs and share it with Ms. Wray. Oh and there is a Vocab 14 Quiz next class, two lit terms were due at 3:00 today, and keep reading your independent reading novels. Date Alert! Projects are due April 17.
Unless I'm forgetting anything, that is all. Have a great weekend everyone!
We began class with a poem: The World is Too Much With Us, Late and Soon by William Wordsworth. Mrs. Wray then proceeded to remind us to update our independent reading progress on GoodReads and that the only homework over break would be to finish our paper and read Act III of Macbeth.
Our first activity of the day was reconvening with our Macbeth scene partners in order to condense and modernize the interaction between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth in Act II Scene II. Both Jinghui and Drew and Isabelle and Sara entertained the class by performing their unique interpretations of the scene.
Some important points that were brought up in the class discussion after the skits were:
Lady Macbeth is not as strong and resolute as she originally appeared, which makes her feel more human to the reader.
Macbeth is already feeling a sense of guilt directly after he commits the murder, for he cannot even bring himself to say "amen."
Macbeth describes different aspects of sleep (in sleep you are innocent, it heals the hurt minds, sleeping is the death of each day, it is cleansing and gives you energy); he hears a voice crying "sleep no more"
We then continued to work on analyzing Macbeth's language after he has committed the murder and we talked about the visual that is created by the language. His lines essentially imply that if he places his hand in water, everything will turn red because of the horrible deed he has done. He states this in two different ways: through long, multi-syllable language, and short, staccato words. People commented that this could show two sides of Macbeth's personality. Many also thought that it emphasized the gravity of what he did; flowery and simply language both had the same effect in this instance. Lastly, we discussed how the language showed a sense of resolution and harsh acceptance.
We concluded class by watching the Patrick Stewart version of Macbeth through the end of Act II. Some important points that were made in our discussion about the clip were:
We talked about where the director decided to set the movie, it looks kind of like World War II
The underground setting relates to the Great Chain of Being (more matter than spirit)
The bunker is a closed system and thus provides a sense of closeness an shows how it would be difficult to get away with murder
Emphasis on status and title shows how people can easily become corrupt in this society
Nurses playing the role of the witches creates a paradox
3/16/15Morgan Lloyd's Scribe Four: Fifty Shades of Scribe
We bounded into Honors English, chipper as ever, and sat down in our seats, now arranged in a semicircular pattern. Class opened with a poem, "To Helen About Her Hair", written by one Robinson Jeffers about some random woman's hair. Some found it charming, but I couldn't help but find the whole concept rather creepy. Perhaps it's time I stop considering myself a romantic...
We then moved to the five hour discussion over our living history papers we have every class. Mrs. Wray kindly informed us that we could turn our papers in on Wednesday, if we were so inclined, but it will be due properly after the break. It will not be extra credit, however, so there goes my motivation. She mentioned that this batch of stories was to enthralling for a simple glance, and that she was ending up reading the whole thing. Thanks for making her push back the deadline, guys! Also, if you want, you can turn it in any time over Spring Break vis a vis Google Drive. There was also hints that fun things would happen on Wednesday, perhaps involving costumes and baked goods, so pick another day to skip.
Next, Mrs. Wray regaled us with a story about an Australian professor who had contacted her, asking to talk to a previous student, as his/her Living History story had been so incredible the guy thought he/she was actually there. Needless to say, the man was rather crushed when he found out he'd stumbled upon a fifteen-year-old's English assignment. Better luck next time, I suppose.
After that we had a vocab quiz, which started and ended with little incident. After handing those in we started talking about independent reading projects. Turns out that Mrs. Wray was a little optimistic about the number of people keeping up on the assignment, and so the due date was shifted to April 17. Get working, people!
Once all that was done, halfway into the period, we started talking about tragedy. Mainly, the Aristotelian (love that word) and Shakespeare's definitions. The Aristotelian
revolved around the "arousal of pity and fear", and from there the catharsis of those emotions. Fate was was screwed the heroes over, not their own actions. Shakespeare, meanwhile, thought that fate should play a lesser part, compared to the actions of the hero. The tragic hero has a lot of admirable characteristics, but one tragic flaw that leads to his downfall; ironically, this tragic flaw is usually what led to his praise. We discussed whether Macbeth's tragic flaw was impressionability or ambition. Form there, we talked about the tragic vision and tragic plot. The hero is always engaged in a losing battle with life; after the peripeteia, or reversal of fortune, it all goes downhill for him. However, the conclusion of the tragedy serves to restore moral order.
Talking about the dagger soliloquy and Act 2 Scene 1 was next on the agenda. We conversed in small groups about the contrast between Macbeth and Banquo, how the former was more calculating and in power, while the latter was more open and deferential. The end of the soliloquy reminded me of the incredible song "Heaven and Hell", and I had to start singing it, which caused Quincy to remark that Mrs. Wray seemed to have more patience with our shenanigans than usual. I, myself, have no opinion on the subject; I'm to busy listening to the song.
Actually, the song kind of fits.
We discussed how we would stage the soliloquy if we were directing Macbeth, and whether we would show the dagger or not. There were some fantastic ideas, but I feel the 2006 movie did it best; having the dagger be a shadow from a palm tree seems much more to the spirit if what Shakespeare really intended. After that, we read the soliloquy, then went into the hall for a little while and talked about what it would say in modern language. Time ran out before we could finish, and Mrs. Wray assigned us our homework; to finish Act Two and do our Vocab 14 sentences. Now, for the enjoyment of all, the cheesy Australian Macbeth in all its glory!
Tromeo and Juliet was more respectful than this (actually, maybe not) Anika Todt
Today is Ms. Wray's birthday, so class started up with a (surprisingly upbeat) funeral dirge (the happy birthday song). This was followed by the rearrangement of the lonesome two-person table group in the back, which took longer than usual because Ms. Wray was striving for "gender equality" in her rearrangements. The topic of discussion then quickly veered off into a different direction as the class began to discuss Mt. Whistler. As the discussion dwindled, our class was presented with a poem by E.E. Cummings, titled Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond".
We were then handed the notorious Honors English Applications and told the test day will be April 15th. This announcement was followed by several students expressing anxieties about the "dreaded Junior AP English". Luckily though, Ms. Wray offered to have several students come in and talk to us about what it's like taking the class, and she assured us that Ms. Aalberg is not a harsh grader. When Ms. Wray finally got around to handing out the applications, she was thrilled to discover that every single person in the class grabbed a form.
Discussion then turned to last nights homework, which was to register for noredink.com. Ms. Wray then assured us that the website wasn't going to sell our personal information to the black market. Several students then, to their astonishment, found out that the website was pronounced "no red ink", not "no redink", and Morgan pointed out that the website did in fact use red ink (oh the scandal). As far as grading our assignments on the website, it was determined that they would be graded based on completion, much to everyone's relief.
Addressing the drafts we turned in last class, Ms. Wray admitted she hadn't had a chance to read them yet since her time was dedicated to junior conferences at the moment. She then promised that she will be able to read through and comment on all our papers by tomorrow afternoon. She also requested that we upload our drafts to Google drive and share it with her to make the process more efficient. Though we won't be getting our feedback until tomorrow, keep in mind that the final version will still be due on Wednesday.
Our discussion was then directed toward the article we read last night on the Great Chain of Being. Several good points came up, including the fact that if Macbeth chooses to kill King Duncan, he will be disrupting the Great Chain of Being. In addition, any disruption in the chain was thought to have a ripple effect and affect everything else in the universe. Due to the nature of the Great Chain of Being, the individual is viewed as simply another "brick in the wall".
We then moved on to discussing the four humours (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm) that were thought to make up the human body at the time. Ms. Wray pulled up a chart that showed which humours were associated with each season/element/organ/temperature/disposition/traits. Meg and Nora both pointed out that the belief in humours implies that a person has very little free will since the balance of their humours (which is essentially genetic) already determines their natural disposition.
Our attention shifted back to the image in the Great Chain of Being packet and Ms. Wray told us that demons were often ranked higher than humankind on the chain despite their evil nature. Since the chain is based on spirit vs. matter and not good vs. evil, this ranking did appear to make sense.
Next, we discussed which Macbeth soliloquy we preferred. Most of the class preferred the second version of the soliloquy because they argued that his aggression was more captivating, conveyed his troubled nature, and appeared more personal. Others argued the opposite, claiming that his aggressive attitude actually detracted from his performance.
We then discussed Macbeth's use of euphemisms in the scene and the implications of such language. This was followed by Quincy noting that even if Macbeth killed Duncan, he still wouldn't be crowned king since Duncan's son is the heir to the throne as the Prince of Cumberland. It was then noted that the Prince of Cumberland would be the first to draw suspicion since it would appear that Macbeth would have no reason to kill Duncan. Our response to this all is Tome #27.
This discussion was then followed by Ms. Wray requesting several volunteers to act out the second half of Act 1 Scene 7 in which Lady Macbeth convinces Macbeth to go along with her plan. During their performances, the class discussed why Macbeth and Lady Macbeth don't have any children. After a bit of struggle conveying the belittling/disgusted manner of Lady Macbeth, the actors improved considerably and earned themselves a solid A+. This, of course, was followed by an accidental innuendo followed by a lengthy giggle fit in the classroom. Tome #28 was to record what we thought was Lady Macbeth's most persuasive line in the scene. Our homework is to finish reading Act 2 Scene 1.
“Got up and dressed up
and went out & got laid
Then died and got buried
in a coffin in the grave.”
No, my friends, that is not an excerpt from the classic teen song about going crazy because you are young. No, that was an excerpt from our poem of the day, “Mexico City Blues [113th Chorus]” by Jack Kerouac. That excerpt was brought to you by “Gap” because “Kerouac wore khakis.” However, this is not an advertisement for “Gap” clothing since Hemingway also wore khakis, and we all know what a lively and entertaining writer he was. This poem was also brought to you by Ms. Wray’s twitter feed, proving that my parents are now less “hip” than my teachers.
“You should pick up a Yearbook application!”
That message was brought to you by Ms. Wray (not “Gap” or three witches). Also, two copies of your historical narrative rough draft are due Tuesday. One lit term is due next week too. If you are feeling like it is hopeless, remember that “It’s always darkest before it is completely black”-Chairman Mao. I guess that means we should pull an all-nighter.
We also discussed Tome #25 (The one with the Macbeth excerpts) today. Ms. Wray continued to be “hip” and divided us into debrief groups in a creative way by having us go to corners that were named after something we preferred. (Meanwhile, Ms. Wray is still having a dog naming crisis, so please let her know if you prefer the name "Suki" or "Harper").
Round 1 (3C): The Food Groups (No, we didn’t draw the food pyramid)
Steak and Potatoes: The beards that Banquo mentions are a reference to the cliché “To beard a lion in its den,” so Banquo is scared to “interpret” since he is in unfamiliar territory.
Fried Chicken: Banquo’s confusion towards the witches’ physical appearance relates to his confusion about the prophecy.
Pizza: Banquo is questioning the possibility of witches, as they seem otherworldly.
Sushi: The beard is a line of reality.
Round 2 (4C): The Music Groups
Classic Rock: The witches are being sarcastic and disrespectful by ignoring Macbeth’s question.
Alternate College: The third witch predicts the future. The three witches represent the past, present, and future.
Hip Hop: The witches are malicious and are invoking “hail” in its form that means to fall.
Jazz and Classical: Ditto.
Round 3 (5B): The Vacation Groups
Backpacking in Thailand: Those at the top have more to lose when they fall.
Shopping and Museums in Paris: The witches are predicting the past present and future.
Washington D.C.: The pattern is less to greater, less to greater, greater to less. The third witch seems to care more about power.
South America Ruins: The witches seem to respect Banquo more than they respect Macbeth.
Today, we learned about soliloquies, asides, and monologues.
Soliloquy: A lengthy speech in which a single character- usually is alone on stage- expresses his or her opinion to the audience.
Soliloquy Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3dKM37s4PM (And yes, I used that for a lit term).
Aside: A brief remark to the audience while other characters are onstage.
Monologue: A long speech to the people onstage.
We also did an exercise on Macbeth’s thought process (Line 140, Scene 3) by holding hands with a partner and swaying back and forth. Jenny and Tuesday won the competition and will be advancing to the State Swaying Competition this weekend. Good luck to them! As for the rest of us, we got a C- and will be having a grade caused mental break down this weekend. In addition to finishing our second rough drafts and a lit term, we have to finish Act 1 of Macbeth.
3/4/15
Katy Howells
Ms. Wray began class by congratulating Sarah on her Silver Key award! Good job Sarah. We then spent the 1st 5 minutes (10 minutes) discussing and reviewing our rough drafts with our partners. It's also important to note that Ms. Wray's powerpoint font was not liked by the class, and was called "childish"; Ms. Wray liked how it contrasted with her more appropriate font. We then talked about our scenes. Meg introduced a cruise ship for the witches scene, and something about "vodka moms (?)".
We then learned a couple Macbeth facts. It was written in 1606 during King James' rule. King James had something against witches, and witches are prominent in Macbeth, a connection maybe?
After that, we began reading the book today and dividing into roles. The Witches are very popular roles and there is now a line up to get them. Ms. Wray had Cami and Kaity act out part of Act 1 Scene 2, and it ended up with Kaity stabbing Cami. (Not real, of course). The 3 witches then danced in a circle, chanting, holding hands, and being sinister. (Kinda).
We spent the rest of class reading. The witches have beards.
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3/2/15
Emi Ampo
In the beginning of class, Ms. Wray showed the class the framed certificate of appreciation and letter she received from the Smile train organization. She walked around the room, allowing us to see both the certificate and the letter with the photos of the children we helped get treated with our donations.
Then, we exchanged our first rough drafts of the Living History project with a partner and discussed our main concerns about our papers. Each partner wrote bullet points on concerns he or she had about the paper as well.
Next, we finished up our Macbeth quote activity, where we gathered around in a circle in order according to the number of our quote. We then went in order and stated our quote as clearly as possible the first time around, in a whisper the second time around, and a shout the third time around. Ms. Wray then had us go back to our seats as showed us a wordle composed of words from Macbeth. Some of the most prominent words in the Macbeth wordle included; hath, thou, and Macbeth.
Ms. Wray then introduced us to our 23rd tome addressing our thoughts on what we inferred would happen regarding character, conflict, etc. based on the three different Macbeth activities. If you don't remember them, the included the acting out of one mystery scene, the reading aloud of various quotes from the book, and the observation of the Macbeth wordle. Some students believed that there was a large possibility for some form of conspiracy and death to occur during Macbeth.
After discussing the 23rd tome, we watched three short clips of three different versions of Macbeth movies. The first movie clip was the beginning of a version by Polanski in 1971, which featured three old, haggard witches mumbling their lines while burying a knife, severed arm, and a noose on a desolate beach. One of the old witches had a missing eye and seemed to give of an aura of authority over the other two witches. The second clip was from the beginning of a version by Wright in 2006. In this version, the three witches were far younger. They were more like seemingly frenzied school girls with pale skin while committing acts of vandalism in a cemetery. The third clip was by Goold in 2010 and was the most recently produced of the three movies. This one had three older women who wore nurses uniforms and one of the witches tore out a patient's heart after watching him die. This third clip gave off a more sinister and horror-movie like feeling.
After watching and discussing our thoughts about all three clips, we wrote notes, opinions, and observations about all three in a table under the 23rd tome response. Finally, Ms. Wray concluded class with a quick summary and description of the setting of the beginning of act one, scene one of Macbeth.
The homework for next class is to edit your partner's Living History first draft and to complete the 24th tome. The 24th tome is a tome where we fill out a table and write down stage directions as though we were directing act one scene one of Macbeth. Two literary terms are also due by the end of this week.
At the start of class Ms. Wray reminded us that we need to come up with some suggestions for a Goodread's group name because so far she has received only one suggestion from an "anonymous" source, email her if you have any ideas. She also is looking for potential dog names! We read the poem "Nature" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow then split up into groups of 3-4 people to edit scene 2. Remember that the rough draft is due Monday! We then discussed the "Psychology of Evil", a TED talk by Philip Zimbardo, and the subject of our Tome 22. Some interesting points included the difference between being evil and an evil act, the subjective notion of morality, and the way to tell a person's true nature being revealed through their treatments of their inferiors. Next class is Vocab Quiz 12!
We began class with a short discussion concerning school hours and week days. We brainstormed preferable alternatives to the way school is currently organized, conferring whether we'd like to have longer school hours and a three day weekend, month long breaks distributed throughout the year, or longer school years and more days off. After this short conversation, Ms. Wray read to us "Mind" by Richard Wilbur (http://imagination.pressible.org/cndmnt/go-bat-team).
Shortly after, and I am not sure how, the class became aware of Ms. Wray's cousin, who was not only a model and a doctor, but who also dumped Matt Damon for the leading drummer in Metallica. Mind Blown.
While we were still processing this piece of information, Ms. Wray left to make copies of our scenes, challenging us to engage in some form of a literary activity. The Sophomore Honors English students quickly took advantage of this opportunity, playing games of hang-man and singing along to "Staying Alive".....I don't think that counted as a literary activity.....
Once Ms. Wray returned to the class with our copies in her hand, we organized ourselves into groups and prepared to edit our scenes. Much to our dismay, we had to read them out loud to the group, which was, for me anyways, very helpful. Everyone's stories and ideas in my group seemed interesting and was so engaging, which only made me want to read them all the more. Hopefully everyone is as excited as I am for this project! We were given talking points to touch upon during our scene discussion and Ms. Wray taught us methods to unfold our stories in an original and luring way, rather than the over-done 'flashback'.
Somewhere through this lecture and the group scene discussion, we were met by a.........BEEEEP. BEEEEP. BEEEEP......Alas, it was a fire drill! Alarmed and disheveled, the class moved its way outside, only to come back in five minutes later.
With the last three minutes of class, we rushed through tonight's homework, which was: second Living History Project scene (bring 3 copies for group discussions), watch a Ted-Talk and answer the questions provided, and lastly, have a great weekend!
Oh yes, and to bring our independent reading novels for next class!!!!
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 2/18/15 Nic Quattromani
We started off class today with a vocabulary quiz on List #12; this was fairly quick and easy, as far as quizzes go, because it is still early in the semester and as such we did not have any cumulative vocabulary to review. After everyone had handed their quizzes in, Mrs. Wray presented a short slideshow regarding the proper placement of various forms of punctuation in relation to direct quotations. We were reminded to place hyphens, colons, and semicolons outside of quotes, while quotation and exclamation marks were to be placed inside the quote only when they were part of it, and commas and periods always went inside the quotation marks unless they were placed before the section of quoted text. Additionally, we were informed that the first scene for our historical fiction pieces will be due next class period, and we had a brief discussion about how to adequately craft a scene in a fictional narrative. We headed across the hall to the computer lab once that was finished. Today's target for the research project was 40 notecards and six sources, which was the final total for the assignment. While we were working on these, Mrs. Wray spoke with us individually about our story planning sheets and provided some helpful advice regarding the overall structure of our historical fiction pieces, and at the end of the third period we returned to the classroom to receive Vocabulary List #12.
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2/13/15
Tuesday Lewman
Shortly after entering class, we handed in our lit terms with a unanimous sigh of relief and got on with our day. For our poem, Jessica read us "The River's Tail". Quickly we discussed some details of our class Goodreads group, which you should all make sure to sign up for if you haven't already! We also tried to look for a way to kick "Zoe" out of our group, but never came to a final decision. Our conversation took a turn and Mark and Morgan shared about their experience at the All the Light We Cannot See book talk, which it seems went well. Before transitioning to the social studies lab to work on our 30 notecards and 5 sources due by the end of class, we discussed our "Develop Your Narrator" sheets (which were completed as homework the night before) in small table groups. Mrs. Wray passed out the "Story Planning Sheet" to complete as part of our homework, which led to a conversation about planning our stories, naturally. Her advice to us was to use and finish the planning sheet, but remember to let your creative process do its thing as well. Mrs. Wray also showed us some helpful links she put up on here to helpful tips on narrative writing. We were advised not to condense time, tell our stories from a distance, and that nobody is compelled by summary. A point I thought was most interesting was to think of how your favorite movies play out, and be inspired by them. After a lengthy discussion on the direction of our papers, we finally went to the lab to research. Overall, Friday the 13th wasn't too bad. I hope everyone is having a great weekend! Remember to start reading your independent novel if you haven't already and sign up for Goodreads!
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Isabelle Cullen 2/9/15
Hello class! We began Monday's class with the usual passing back of Lit Terms and we turned in List 11 vocabulary sentences. Mrs. Wray discussed the radio program called The Moth, which is an hour long broadcast where people tell their real stories. Students in the state of Oregon are trying to start a high school version of the Moth and decided to call it the Cocoon. If you would like to participate, ask Mrs. Wray for details. The floor was then opened to questions about sourcing like websites vs multiple articles, can we have more than six sources, and others. Another question was if you have contradicting information,what do you do? You state it in the Attribution of Research. There was also a question about print sources and Mrs. Wray's answer was a print source can be a newspaper article, for example, that was originally printed out and you found it online. There were many other questions that my pencil did not catch the answer to. After a long talk about sources, Mrs. Wray read the poem "Siren Song" by Margaret Atwood. We then passed out the outline for our Independent Reading Projects and discussed it. You must read a fictional book and make a product for it like a movie, a poem, or something else and give a description of how it ties into the book. A flurry of hands shot up when Mrs. Wray asked for book title suggestions. Some of the books that were suggested were Life of Pi, Dune, The Colonization Series, A Fine Balance, Count of Monte Cristo, and Jelico Road. Mrs. Wray also brought up an issue with lit. terms regarding the numbering , which is continuing through semester 1(21,22,23...), and copying lit terms off the internet. Don't do it because you'll have to redo it. The class was moved into the lab to work for the rest of the class on their living histories project.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 2/6/2015 Drew Vogelsang
We started of class by making a making the decision to skip the last vocabulary tests of the unit and move on in order to catch up with the schedule. This means that there will be a completely fresh start on Quiz 11 regarding the 100% Club. After taking Vocab Quiz 8, we began discussing a timeline for the Living History Project. Mrs. Wray reminded us that the amount of information on the notecard should be manageable and small pieces of a document instead of the entire thing. The amount of notecards we need for the project has gone up to 40, all of them linked to a source and completely filled in. The required print sources can be anything that wasn't on the internet first. This guideline includes online documents and news articles. For the rest of class we went to the lab and worked on gathering information for our projects.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 2/4/2015 Jenny Kwon
Welcome Back Ms. Wray! We started off class by putting our phones in our phone cubbies and with a live performance of Mark reading the daily poem. Than we proceeded to ask Mrs. Wray more detailed questions about our Living History Projects. Remember, if you are a topic that is doubled up with another student, it would be a good idea to check what they are doing to ensure that we don't have too similar of stories! During our discussion about the project, Mrs. Wray reminded us about the 35 facts we should include in our paper (they can be about the weather, street name, etc.). Also, we were given a packet with advice to writing historical fiction. Please address this tool when in times of trouble, confusion, and (hopefully not) tears.
After learning more about our project and reviewing the packet we were given, we moved to the computer lab for about fifty forty-five minutes. At the lab we were given the opportunity to start our notecards and research! Yay! There, Mrs. Wray individually had short discussions or "check-ins" with us about our individual topics.
Our homework was to study for the vocab quiz #8, have 2 lit terms (yay! no more procrastination!), and have at least 1 source card (basically a bibliography) and 7 notecards. Don't forget to use noodletools! It's very helpful even if we love google docs :)
Sorry for the late post but I hope everyone has a wonderful night!
P.S. If gale or any other library source does not let you log in, both the username and password is: lakeoswego
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Extra Little Note Isabelle Cullen 2-1-15
To those who attended the book discussion, here is the link to the video of the autistic girl I mentioned. Video from Book Chat
Hope you guys enjoy this video as much as I did.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 1/30/15 Rhys Richmond
The class period started off with us discovering that we had a substitute teacher instead of Mrs. Wray. Ms. Rathbow, who many of the class knew from 9th Grade Honors English, stepped in to collect our Vocabulary Sentences (list #8) and our Living History preliminary worksheet. Upon calling roll, she stumbled over a few names (not unexpected), but we were understanding. We were asked to star our most-wanted topic out of three so Mrs. Wray knew which one was our priority upon assigning this weekend. Mrs. Wray will post our official topics sometime over the weekend on the wiki.
Next, Mrs. Rathbow overviewed our homework. We are to 1. Study for Vocab Quiz #8 next Thursday and 2. Complete the white Discovery Research Sheet upon receiving our official topics this weekend.
The rest of the class was devoted to Ms. Doyle's presentation on research and citing for our upcoming Living History Project. Ms. Doyle walked us through what we should be looking for in our research (1. Understanding the event "what happened" and 2. Historical Details "what it felt like"). From that point, we learned how to find a book in the LOHS Library catalog (make sure to note the call number and title) and access certain eBooks available on the Library website. After Print sources, we spoke about several Library-sponsored resources for research. The main three are:
- Gale PowerSearch (a good source for information on everyday life) (HINT: If you're looking for a specific decade in history, you can utilize LOJ's Gale PowerSearch to find categories on the 80s, 90s etc.)
- ABC-Clio (good for an overview of a historical event) (HINT: make sure to use 5 or less words in your search)
- jSTOR (very scholarly, not good for an overview of an event, but extremely useful for science experiments/journals etc)
For all three, the at-home username and password are lakeoswego and lakeoswego (easy, right?).
The culmination of the presentation was about Citing Sources and Noodle Tools. We all accessed or set up our Noodle Tools accounts and created new projects to add to Mrs. Wray's dropbox account. Ms. Doyle walked us through citing both print and online sources, and directed us to try making our own citation. We repeated the steps with making a notecard, and finally we had the last 15 minutes to ourselves to work on notecards.
Good luck with starting your Living History projects everyone!
1/14/15 Jessica Seropian
Question: Why do we use @s as entry markers? Huh. Anyway, on to the scribe notes!
We started class off today with vocab test #7. Unfortunately, since we were short on time, we didn't get to listen to the blessed Stayin' Alive by the, again, blessed Bee Gees. Either way, we did get to listen to some music during the quiz considering that the class next door was playing a ridiculously loud song (you would think that they would learn some manners!).
After the vocab test Ms. Wray handed out two sheets of paper. On one of the handouts was Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and on the other, there was a poem. The poem, "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough," was the inspiration for the title for Of Mice and Men. The inspiration was found in the penultimate stanza, third line from the top.
From there we had about 10 minutes to fill out one of the "What's Important?" sheets. This response will be Tome #21.
After that, we went straight into discussion. Today's discussion was different, though, as Ms. Wray explained. We each got two pennies at the beginning of the activity. When we wanted to talk, we had to throw a penny into the middle of our circle. This way, by the end of the period, we would have all put our own two cents in (very clever Ms. Wray!).
Some of today's discussion points:
What would you do for the ones you care about? How far would you go?
Theme of "ends" - look to page 55 for the quote about the playing cards.
Theme of the exploitation of the innocent
Curly's wife's characterization
The parallel of the beginning of the first and last chapters
Theme of lonliness
Lennie's "vision" of Aunt Clara and the creepy, giant rabbit head.
As for homework, finish up any Lit Terms, organize your tome, and prepare for the dreaded final. Dun dun dun!!!!
Happy hump day!
New Geico "Hump Day" commercial ^^^^
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 1/12/15 Mark Yazhari
Ms. Wray began the class by reminding us of the upcoming class discussion after finals on All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr. Most of the class is planning on finishing the book and attending the class discussion, but it looks like Jinghui has formed a cult of anti-extra-credit followers. Jinghui, I never would've expected such treachery from you...
Next, Ms. Wray told the class that she will "hopefully" have our Personal Odyssey projects graded and back to us before finals. Looks like hope is all we have, now... She told us that, admittedly, grading English papers and projects usually takes much longer than the grading of most of our other classes; fortunately, we caught the hint that she was insulting the other education departments, and I for one will never forgive my other teachers for their sloth and laziness. Thanks, Ms. Wray!
Back to All The Light We Cannot See; looks like we need to get our tickets to hear Anthony Doerr on Saturday, January 17th at 11am at the Lake Oswego Library – bring your library card and get there early, and there will be a maximum of two tickets per person. Doerr will be speaking on February 11th at 7:00 pm at the LOHS auditorium, and there will be a complimentary community dessert buffet hosted by the Lake Oswego Women's Club at 6pm at LOHS (ooh la la!). The lecture and dessert buffet are free at LOHS, but you need to get a ticket from the library for admittance.
At this point, the announcements were done and Ms. Wray (tragically) collected our revised Kite Runner essays. Mine, of course, was already tear-stained and dripping when she seized it from my grubby mitts.
We proceeded to take our Of Mice and Men passage analysis quiz, in which we had to choose an extensive passage about a character from the novella and explain how Steinbeck uses details and imagery to paint a picture of the character. After the quiz, we moved into groups to discuss the different characters we had chosen – my group focused on George/Lennie, who are often described at the same time in contrast to each other.
Our group discussions morphed into one big class discussion, a few points of which I will comment on:
Emi doesn't think that George really expresses affection for Lennie in the novella, and that the two characters don't seem to have any close moments together (looks like Emi was Ampo-ed up, today!). In all seriousness, we explored this general question for quite a while: is George taking advantage of Lennie or sharing in their companionship and caring for him? I, for one, believe that George cares about Lennie, but all you George haters can say what you like!
Ms. Wray offered the perspective of a parent; she said that being a parent can be extremely difficult, and that sometimes you say something that you didn't mean to your children out of exasperation or frustration; George is almost like a parent for Lennie, and perhaps his frustration with Lennie is equivalent to that of a parent with a child. But overall, their relationship is one of loving companionship, right, guys?
Morgan pointed out Slim's particularly creepy and abrupt entrance into the novella, and I sort of can't believe I didn't notice that before... Perhaps Slim is getting to my mind... (help me!)
All in all, we had a discussion-based and productive class. Our homework is to finish Of Mice and Men, study for vocabulary quiz #7, update our tomes (by finals), and start studying for the final using Ms. Wray's study guide. Keep up with all your work, everyone, and make sure to prepare in advance for finals!
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 1-8-15 Meg Smith First Scribe of the Year! Yay! Insert snazzy title here.
The class started off with a frustrated and amused meandering in, as none of us had thought to check the door to see if it was locked or not. Hey, there wasn't anything on the entrance exam about common sense.
We were then quickly marched down to the Math hall computer lab, where we were asked to log on and print our essays. This struck fear in the hearts of many, but we were able to work through it. As many people buried their faces in their hands about spelling errors (thank you, iPads) some of our bravest students undertook the task of rearranging the mismatched essays.
When we got back to the classroom, we chatted for a while and didn't seem to wonder what was taking Ms. Wray so long. The questions we didn't ask were answered when she brought in, to the delight of many, donuts! We were overjoyed, and then were worried that these donuts were to soften the blow of bad news. (I drew a parallel here between this, and the sugar cubes given to the sacrificial sheep in TKR.) She reassured us that because we were so freaked out after last class, she felt awful and wanted to comfort us with baked goodies. (I drew a parallel here between this and "There is a way to be good again.") She then said, in a moment which will be forever etched upon our brains, "Curse those damn iPads!"
As a result of our poor essay writing under pressure, we will be given a chance for redemption. We did a peer edit on our papers, and Ms. Wray will comment on them via Google Docs by Saturday morning. We are expected to bring a typed, printed, and revised version of our essay to class by Monday.
Then, as we sighed with relief through mouthfuls of sugary, delicious pastry, Ms. Wray and a few volunteers passed back lit terms and vocab sentences.
We then proceeded to walk down to the library to pick up Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men. We noted its smallness, wondered if it would be more like the dreaded The Pearl or the beloved East of Eden, debated on whether the small furry and cotton-tailed animal on the cover was a frog or a rabbit. Judging by its long ears, long body, and fluffy tail, combined with context clues from the first few chapters, it's a rabbit.
To preface our preliminary discussion about Of Mice and Men, we examined the famous Depression-era photograph "Migrant Mother".
You know, this one.
We read the photographer's statement and made some observations about her weathered yet onwards-looking expression, the children physically leaning on her, and how the photographer's statement complemented this. We wrote a bit, and this became a tome.
To add to the tome, we did a character walkaround to introduce the characters of Of Mice and Men. Some of us were blessed to witness Serena's portrayal of Lennie. She can play Queen Bey, she can play Lennie, just give the girl an Oscar already.
Then, much to many students' groans about Out of the Dust (curse that book. You can't just make poetry by hitting the enter key a bunch of times!) we saw a few images from the Dust Bowl and talked about the agricultural crisis which made up a large portion of the Great Depression.
As time ran out of class and we began to pack up, Ms Wray instructed us to read Chapters 1-3 of OMM, and think about Mice, Men, and what those things mean.
For amusement purposes, I have included two of my favorite songs. The first, be sure you aren't eating or drinking anything while you watch/listen to it. Heed my warning. The second I chose because it's a lovely song and I just really like it.
As the class started, we found ourselves scrambling to find our seats yet again. This time we were to be organized back into our envelope thread groups.
After successfully navigating back to our envelope buddies, Mrs. Wray got straight to the point.
a.) The first thing was that we would unfortunately NOT be getting our Odyssey tests back today as Mrs. Wray still had a few papers left to grade. However, we were pleasantly informed of Turnitin.com's review and comment feature which let Mrs. Wray grade our papers online and set voice audio recording that we could listen to personally at a later time (not so bad). However, she did mention a few key things our class could work on in the future in order to improve our essays. It goes as follows:
- It is crucial that our sub points are based off of concepts and ideas instead of events. While listing examples in Chronological order may seem obviously supportive to us, a key part of having strong body paragraphs is having a notion of what we are trying to say.
- Everyone in the class could especially work on analysis passages with increased depth and precision (i.e.The languge, the devices used, etc.). Picking apart quotes really helps show our understanding of the story and also fits much better with our claims (WHICH MUST BE ARGUMENTS, NOT FACTS)
And to everyone who used the Cyclops Quote, Shame on you. (just kidding)
b.) The second thing?We bombed the quiz... (well not BOMBED, but it could have been a whole lot better. Like, even a hedgehog in a tutu wasn't enough to soften the blow) The whole class got the whole "It's not that many points in the grand scheme of things" lecture that we've all heard from teachers plenty of times but by the time Mrs. Wray finished, we all seemed to feel a little bit better about our grades. Maybe it was that we weren't alone in the fail club.
Thankfully, Mrs. Wray gave us a short power point presentation on what we could do to help retain the information that we read in the future:
- Have a composition notebook or something easy to write in at all times. This way, jotting something down as soon as you hear/read/think of it is easy and can provide good questions and comments later.
- Sticky note your text!!
- Review your composition notebook before class to get everything you read earlier fresh in your mind.
After our quizzes and lit terms were passed back around, we began working on our big project for the day; a mini draft using our envelope thread as a thesis. The first step was organizing all our notecards and spreading them out. Then we were supposed to create a strong thesis and find sub points that backed it up using our notecards as the concrete details. Honestly, every writing piece we do still seems like a huge CD/CM paragraph. While we were working Mrs. Wray informed us of the horrible news that occurred in Pakistan only yesterday. The Taliban destroyed a school in Peshawar killing more than 130 children and injuring hundreds more. We send of grievances out to those in Pakistan. The Kite Runner is incredibly relevant even in today's society as exhibited here. This put a hsh amongst the class. However, nothing could keep us down forever!
We continued to work on our mini essays up until the bell rung. We didn't get to finished as much as we all hoped when we started, but overall each of these looked pretty nice. By the way, if anyone has a better picture of the projects feel free to submit them. Also, if anyone wants their own copy text me at: 503-539-0084. Sorry for the late post guys!
*ALERT* THERE IS NO IN CLASS ESSAY ON FRIDAY. IT WILL BE THE TUESDAY AFTER WINTER BREAK. HOWEVER, THERE WILL STILL BE A FINAL DISCUSSION ABOUT THE KITE RUNNER ON FRIDAY. MAKE SURE TO BRING NOTES AND YOUR BOOK. Good luck!
Today started with yet another rearrangement of the classroom to keep us on our toes. All desks were in a semi circle facing the projector (soon to be revealed why).
After everybody found the chair to their liking, we discussed our blackout poems in groups then settled back down for a general class discussion about what it was like doing them overall. The majority of the class thought it was amazing how despite the randomness of the page, you could still connect it to the Kite Runner. There were some who disagreed though. After discussion, we had multiple poems of the day. Jessica, Kamala, Katy, Nora, Serena, and Mark were all willing to share their beautiful blackout poems with the class. (To read this rest, they are hanging on the back wall courtesy of Sydney)
POP QUIZ! Yes, a pop quiz. It actually happened… and no the speaker was not Amir.
Following the quiz, there was another brief discussion regarding the two main current events of the book. The big secret has been revealed (Hassan and Amir are half brothers),and Assef has returned. the two questions that arise from this are - Is Assef's return forced? Does the author enjoy tying up lose ends? Think about it. We will be elaborating more on the latter question next class.
Not only did we have a pop quiz, but also a surprise video about the dancing boys of Afghanistan (hence the desk arrangement). A journalist goes undercover to investigate. We will finish the video next class.
As for homework, finish Kite Runner.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 12-11-14 Morgan’s Scribe III: The Scribeocalypse (Yes, I’m actually supposed to be scribing)
A calamity struck our Honors English class this fine Thursday morning: no scribe was assigned. Therefore, it has fallen to me to ghost-scribe the day and complete the Morgan’s Scribe trilogy. If you remember anything we do, please feel free to add it.
We walked in to yet another weird seating change: now, the chairs were arranged into pods of four. It was time to convene with our envelope groups and dissect the Kite Runner. But first, we had vocab quiz number 6. I did mine in pen, because that’s how confident I was. There was yet another sentence about someone defrauding the elderly, and I may have ruined our baked goods chances when I forgot the date. It was, overall, like every single other vocab quiz.
After stapling those together with Mrs. Wray’s stapler of dubious origin, we handed them in. Sometime around now, the news was broken that we now have collected around 430 dollars for Smile Train. I can’t imagine it will take another period to reach our $500 goal, something I myself am very excited for. To inspire you to keep giving money, I have this video.
But in all seriousness, there are children with far bigger things to worry about than "the rent is too damn high", and we'll be helping some of them out. So good job, everyone.
Now, it was time to discuss our envelope threads. After synthesizing our quotes together and coming up with some ideas, we broke into jigsaw groups. We had five minutes to discuss before moving onto the next topic. It was like speed dating, but we were talking about the Kite Runner. (something I plan to do on every date from now on).
Finally, it was announced that we would have to read the next apparently spoileriffic section of the Kite Runner and compose a blackout poem with the text we were given. The poem must relate to the Kite Runner, so you can’t just scribble randomly with a Sharpie and see what comes up. In case you're still confused, refer to the helpful guide below.
12-9-14 Morgan's Scribe 2: Electric Boogaloo
As the bell once again rang, the Sophomore Honors English class shuffled through the doors of Mrs. Wray’s class and sat down, suspiciously devoid of energy. Either everyone was coincidentally tired, or something darker was afoot. And I don’t believe in coincidences…
Mrs. Wray waxed eloquent about the benefits of coffee for waking one up, mind, body, and soul. In response, I figured I’d post this.
DON'T BE LIKE TOO MUCH COFFEE MAN
Mrs. Wray then reminded us that Reflections, the literary and art magazine, needs submissions and that they are due by the twelfth. So, get ‘em done. She then told us to submit narratives, vocab stories, and whatever else we have lying around. As inspiration, she read us the first part of Serena’s spectacular story that she wrote for a vocab assignment. Cruelly, Mrs. Wray cut it short, so that we never did find out the ending, but perhaps it could be posted here so we can read it in its entirety?
We then heard two pieces of good news. The first is that we have raised $300 dollars for the Smile Train in what I believe has been five days. That is an incredible feat, and it doesn’t appear the money is drying up. I, for one, am confident we will shatter our goal of $500. The second piece of good news is that the lost lit terms were recovered! I assume that they were be found in an old South American temple, hidden in the middle of the jungle and guarded by all manner of booby traps.
It was like this, guys
As there was some confusion about how exactly we write a lit term, Mrs. Wray kindly instructed us on everything we were doing wrong. That we need to focus more on the quotes we choose and not make general statements seemed to be the biggest thing we need to work on. To our delight, it appears we can now turn in multiple revisions at once. Unfortunately for my plans of unloading twenty revisions the last week of school, Mrs. Wray asked that we please not overload her, as she has enough to grade already.
Mrs. Wray then asked us to take out two pieces of paper, and as we did so A GRAMMAR TOME POPPED OUT!
It was time to work on the appositive! An appositive, for the uninitiated, is a noun phrase that modifies another noun. To aid this along, Mrs. Wray told us a fascinating mashed potato story that I will not be printing here: if you want to hear it, ask her about it. At the end, we were warned to watched out for misplaced modifiers, which I think would make a great alt/rock band name.
To the surprise of some, we were then asked to take out our envelope threads. Remember, kids, Uncle Sam needs you to do your envelope threads everyday. While we did that, the question of what we are doing with the Kite Runner was posed. Mrs. Wray got my hopes up by suggesting interpretive dance, but then shattered my dreams by telling me we will be doing an essay. Perhaps we can have an interpretive dance section tacked onto the end? One can only hope.
We wrote for some twenty minutes about the significance of one of our quotes, or something like that. It happened, moving on. We then turned to discussion. Mrs. Wray started it off by asking how the change of setting has changed the story, and hands shot up like shoots of grass. I forget who said which point, so feel free to claim these as your own, but here were the major points of the discussion. Sorry for the oversimplification. -The move and the differing circumstances had brought Baba and Amir closer together. -Baba still dwells on the past, but Amir lives to forget the past, as shown on page 136 -Amir could still be seen as self-centered, for thinking about himself when he hears about Baba’s cancer. -On the other hand, he could every right to wonder what will happen to himself, as Baba’s death will completely change his world. As Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter said, “Don’t pity the dead. Pity the living”.
Cue to 3:55 for the quote -It is often harder for the first generation of immigrants to adapt than the second generation, as shown by Baba’s refusal to embrace the American customs.
The bell rang in the midst of our discussion, so if you still have points save them for tomorrow. For homework take a bite of the next section of the delicious Kite Runner. See you next time, my comrades-in-arms!
Edit: I have been informed we have a vocab quiz tomorrow. Apologies for the late notice and STUDY FOR BAKED GOODS
12-5-14 Nora Kearns
Class today began with Ms. Wray informing us about the progress her classes have made on raising funds for smile train. We're up to $211 dollars! (Or something like that...I think. $210?) She then passed around the collection bucket for people to make donations. Hopefully we can reach $500!
Ms. Wray then told us about an extra credit opportunity that everyone (well, almost everyone) was pretty excited about. For 10 points extra credit, you can read All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and attend a class discussion on the Thursday afternoon after Finals are over. The most exciting part of her explaining this to us was when she put a box full of brand-new, hard-cover copies of this beautiful book in the center of the classroom and told us to go for it. So of course we all sprinted towards the box in a mad rush like the literature-crazed children we are. Possibly even better than that was the part where she told us the books were ours to keep. *Angels singing*
We spent the rest of class discussing The Kite Runner. Ms. Wray showed us an interesting video on kite flying/running in Afghanistan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfeNUaKxufA). The video, which was made even more interesting by beautiful cinematography, explained the practice of kite fighting, and also showed the cultural importance of this tradition to the Afghan people.
After watching the video, we moved into discussion. First, we talked about our understanding of Afghanistan and how it contrasted with the Afghanistan described in The Kite Runner. People were surprised by both the physical and political descriptions of Afghanistan in the 1970s. We agreed that, for the most part, when we think of Afghanistan we picture a wart-torn, impoverished country afflicted by terrorism. The Afghanistan we read about in The Kite Runner, however, is much more peaceful. Kabul is a beautiful city with citizens of varying socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. People can socialize and children play together out in public without fear of terrorists.
The majority of our discussion was spent analyzing the most important moments in the first two sections. As a precursor to the discussion, Ms. Wray asked us to write about what we thought to be the three most telling moments in the story so far, and then we talked about these moments as a class. The most obviously important moment was Hassan's assault, and Amir's witnessing of this event. We debated Amir's motives for running away, and whether it was out of fear, or his desire to be loved more that Hassan by his father. Other moments people mentioned included Amir's dream, the party, and Hassan and Ali's departure.
As usual, we were so into the discussion that time flew by and we found ourselves rushing to fit in as many interesting points as we could before the bell rang!
The homework is to continue reading and marking, and to continue with Lit Terms. Have a great weekend!
So we started off having some technical difficulties with the presentations and in the meantime Mrs. Wray told us about the SmileTrain charity that we will be helping with. Their site is www.smiletrain.org and we have a goal of raising $500 in the next four weeks.
We were handed out the essay rubric which will be next class, so make sure you're ready for that. You can bring in handwritten notes with your thesis, subpoints, and quotes (page/line). If you have questions about your thesis, email Mrs. Wray.
We then heard the presentations on chapter 21 and 22 from Sophie, Steve, Meg, Emi and Anika and chapters 23 and 24 from Tuesday, Katy, Drew, Jessica and Isabelle. So we are officially done with our presentations!
Remember that the Personal Odyssey Project has been moved to being due 12/1 and be working on that this Thanksgiving break.
Mach 7. Warp Speed. Engines are a go. Launch. English class en route to Planet Learning. Weather: más o menos 30 degrees Fahrenheit, sunny but chilly outside, and skies bluer than that of Alabama. Just how I like it.
To begin the class, we are sadly informed that Ms. Wray's back hurts, and that she is not as elastic as a rubber band at the moment. We wish her a speedy recovery, so that our class can regain that ecstatic pleasure we all know and love when she is at her best.
Groups were scrambling with the intensity of an animal rights activist in New York, to get roles figured out for their presentations that they would present to the present class. Meanwhile, numerous idle individuals checked social media, drew cars, and did pre-calculus homework. I thought they could have spent the time waiting to accomplish more productive and beneficial tasks.
Was Xenia worth maintaining, if there was a risk? (In reference to the Phaeacians sailing Odysseus back home) Possible answers: [y: to uphold the concept of arete and honor] [n: you might die]
What was the purpose of trickery between Athena and Odysseus? (When Odysseus meets the old "shepherd" at Ithaca) Possible answers: [banter] [to test one another of worthiness] [plain caution]
Is Odysseus smart or selfish when he convinced Eumaeus to let him stay? Possible answers: [smart: convenient for Odysseus given his need to stay inconspicuous] [selfish: multiple ways to solve an issue, this was not the best]
Here's a cool content map I made of whether or not Odysseus is an ideal hero:
Odysseus ideal hero? --> [No], --> {why} --> not peaceful (in today's standards), stupid w/ too much pride.
--> [Yes], --> {why} --> perseverent, (during that time) killing lots of people = hero, and pride was seen as a good trait. (scrubby content map, I won't be an engineer anytime soon.)
Books 15-16 (Nic, Max [wins], Morgan, Kamala) hopefully I spelled everything correctly.
Main entertainment factor: Star Wars reference following Ms. Wray saying "although this isn't Star Wars, please pay attention" --> laughter from class --> successkid.jpg
Cool questions:
Is Xenia based on glory or hospitality? [glory: hosts want to show off their shiny toys, flex their muscles etc, so their fame spreads around.] [hospitality: just out of the warm kind hearts of the hosts? citation needed ]
Who's the better father figure for Telemachus? [Odysseus: seen as godlike by everybody, Telemachus looks up to him as a role model, and Odysseus is mentioned more in the story, which shows his influence on his son.]
[Eumaeus: Telemachus would look up to him citation needed as a caretaker who has been there for the majority of his life so far.]
Advice for future for future presentations:
-Dress up for Tablet Vivants: you must feel your inner Odysseus, tap into that chakra, and let it gooooo. This will make the audience more engaged and create a reflection across the x-axes of their frowns.
-Spread discussion questions throughout the presentation, otherwise they overwhelm us at the end.
-Less summary, more analysis. We all read the chapters through and through. citation needed
-ENGAGE the audience. Bring it to life.
Advice for audience: Act like you're interested.
Max wins the Good Guy award for engaging the audience in deeper conversations. +5 respect to you.
Homework: actually READ books 21-24, work on your presentations, do your lit terms, brush your teeth, and enjoy life! I had fun typing out this scribe.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 11/6/14 Drew Vogelsang
Today we started off the class by getting new partners! Our first activity was to do a peer edit of our fourth narrative. Mrs. Wray showed us some examples and ideas for how to present our narratives including a small sweater, box of cereal, alarm system, and puzzle. We then were assigned into groups and went out into the hall to line up all of our timelines that we created in the previous class. After four minutes to gather out thoughts, we wrote our group's two questions on the side of the paper and were given three sticky notes. These were used to respond to a question or quote on the other groups' poems. After everyone finished writing their thoughts, the groups reconvened and examined all the ideas that had been posted on our timelines. We then took the posters back into the classroom where we presented them to the class. This is some of what the groups said:
-Book 9: Describes how the way Odysseus behaves with the cyclops shows his pride and ignorance and also makes him out to be an unreliable narrator.
-Book 10: Discusses how the Odysseus views Elpanor as similar to himself, which is why his death is focused on more than the others despite being so minor and foolish.
-Book 11: Describes how the Oracle's telling of Odysseus' future makes him more cocky or bold, also how meeting with his mother reminds him of how he is needed back at home.
-Book 12: Describes how Odysseus is always bouncing back and forth between being helped by the gods and seeking independence.
After the presentations we randomly selected a slip of paper that told us what books we will be presenting on with a small group.
11/4/14 Emi Ampo
Today, our class started out like every other class day with a poem called "Taxi". Mrs. Wray then instructed us to pull out our odyssey narrative draft number three and our four-squared visual response for books 9-12. Our four-squared visual responses were turned in and we found new partners to peer edit our third narrative drafts. While we edited each others papers, Mrs. Wray played some soothing classical piano music. After spending several minutes working on our drafts, Mrs. Wray then asked if we had any questions and whether or not we found "Traci's List of 10" useful.
Then, Mrs. Wray split up the class into four groups by different vegetables. Instead of group one, two, three, and four, the groups included; cauliflower, asparagus, broccoli, and egg plant. Each of the four different groups was assigned one of books nine through twelve. The asparagus group was responsible for book nine, the cauliflower group was assigned book ten, the broccoli group was assigned book eleven, and the asparagus group was responsible book twelve. Mrs. Wray then informed us that our groups would be responsible for creating a timeline of our assigned books. Each group was given a large piece of paper, on top of which we drew timelines for our individual groups and added pink sticky notes with significant quotes and blue sticky notes analyzing the quotes. Some of the groups went into the hallway to work on their timelines. At around 12:55, all the groups were called back into the classroom and Mrs. Wray told us that we would be presenting our timelines next class.
Our homework for Thursday, 11/6/14 is
1. Completing Tome #14, which is the Epic Simile Activity
2. Finishing our fourth personal narrative (draft).
Hey ;) In today's class we walked in like usual, took our seats, and were ready to go. Mrs. Wray read us a poem by Edgar Allen Poe called 'Spirits of the Dead'. Spooky ;o but this being Halloween very appropriate. Next Mrs. used a few slides to tell us about description in our writing, and 'Showing versus Telling.' She mentioned using specific adjectives and descriptive imagery to make sentences less vague. We then were given the broad sentence 'He was an attractive man'. We used description to show what kind of features we thought made an attractive man, and everyone had something quite different to say... We proceeded to re-write more of these sentences, some regarding a stuffed-marie antoinette head, a farting-roomate, and Sophie's boy problems. We then turned in Vocab #5 sentences.
Next, we self-edited our draft of the second Odyssey personal narrative. We high-lighted areas in which we used specific imagery. We then revised vague sentences that relied too much on 'telling'. While discussing the writing in our narratives, Mrs. Wray mentioned there'd be a list on the wiki of ideas/starting points for narrative topics. She also said that diologue doesn't necessarily need to be added to all pieces, but should be emphasized.
We then filled out a T-notes + Visual Response regarding notes from our reading of books 5-8 of the Odyssey about Odysseys/characterization. We filled out the notes from the discussion portion regarding the same topic. One of the things we discussed was heroism and how Odysseys in the present time compared to his heroic reputation from the past.
For homework,
Read Odyssey books 9-12
Make a 4-squared visual response corresponding with each book that includes the visual and a caption
Hello class. Today’s class began with the same usual things. The bell rang, and we all came to the door to find it locked. Mrs. Wray came to the rescue and we entered class. The class period began with a general run down of the next hour and a half. That included our 4th vocabulary quiz, an editing exercise to get our brains out of the rain clouds, peer editing of our personal narrative, and reading time so Mrs. Wray could decompress with grading. Of course, we could not do our vocabulary quiz unless we had the Bee Gees to pump us up. With music in mind, Drew was asked to give us a solo of “Stayin’ Alive”. Don't fret. He has a sound cloud. After several failed supplications, Mark stepped into the spotlight and gave us a wonderful falsetto and found out about his crumbling relationship.
After our quiz, the one hundred percent club was brought out. The first quizzes weren’t 100% because some people got a 17/17, but were taken off by mistake. It was corrected. Then, we moved on to our editing exercise with horrendous sentences. With every word, you could hear the nails on the chalkboard, and see the revulsion in everyone’s faces. After that, we moved on to our personal narratives. We had to find a partner and peer edit or self- edit if it was too personal. We read their narrative through one time before we made any markings. The second time through, we could make marks on their narrative. We each had three highlighters. Yellow represented the narrative structure like plot, setting, or conflict. Pink was details. Green was evidence of growth or transformation. We used our pen or pencil to underline vague sentences or ideas that need some more detail. After that, you were supposed to write a paragraph to your partner about two strengths and two places they could improve.
Finally, we read for the remainder of the class. For homework, Mrs. Wray added an extra part to our Odyssey reading. We are supposed to take sticky notes, and in each chapter, identify characterization, continue working on personal narratives, and start your vocabulary sentences for list five. I hope my scribe notes have assisted you with a reminder of the day. Happy early Halloween!
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 10/27/14 Max Nguyen
Ms.Wray started the class today with an oxymoron. Happy Monday! There's poop in the Willamette river now too. First and second semester have separate vocab lists. We all thought about standing up. More specifically, we all thought about a time that we took a stand for something that we believed in. Tome #11 is called "Taking a Stand", and it is a brainstorm web of that time you stood up for something. Afterwards, we shared what we wrote about. We then discussed the elements of a good narrative. Yay! Freewrite on our topics. Piano music proved to be quite distracting to the the class. Out of nowhere, we were slapped with the Personal Odyssey project! We are going to write five personal narratives about our odyssey through life. PLEASE DO NOT WRITE ABOUT THE SPECIFICS OF COMING OUT OF YOUR MOTHER, but write about traumatic events surrounding your birth if you choose to write about your birth.
We had a class discussion today about the usage of xenia in books one through four in the Odyssey. Without xenia, the plot would not have been able to progess the way that it did. Telemachus is held to a double standard by his suitors. A person person can't always know for sure who they are dealing with, so people in Ancient Greece decided to treat everyone with kindness. Xenia is practiced out of the goodness of heart. Xenia is to avoid the risk of upsetting someone and getting punished for it. Xenia is a religious practice to the Greeks, so it can be considered a sin when it is violated. Would Telemachus have gotten the same treatment if he looked like a beggar? Xenia is there because people remember what it was like to be on the receiving end of xenia. It could be seen as a restriction on what the Greeks were allowed to do. It's a symbol of social status. Ms.Wray asks us to keep in mind that some people have absent fathers, and she wants to look for the actions that result from a person missing their father.
The homework is to finish a draft of the Personal Odyssey Project and to study for the vocab quiz next class.
As always, Thursday was a pretty great day in room 206. Soon after entering class, we engaged in our daily (technically every other day, but you get the idea) jibber-jabber, which led to Ms. Wray confessing her deepest and darkest secret (that we know of…). Orange is the New Black. Like I'm sure the majority of us, we found out that Ms. Wray too has a particular fondness of watching Netflix when she should be sleeping or doing something related to school. Starting off the class period with a moment of realization that teachers really are human too was refreshing. So with that, we gave a little hip hip hooray for Ms. Wray and continued on.
Transitioning from the seemingly endless noise and post-lunch conversations, we continued working on Grammar Tome #2, on adjectival clauses in specific. In this activity, we went over the practice worksheet we did for homework, because who doesn't love some good ole' adjectival clauses?! When this short activity wrapped up, we turned in our Tomes with a simultaneous sigh of relief. Seeing everyone's elaborate Tome cover designs was certainly a highlight of the day. While we were scrambling around adding last minute touches to our Tomes and struggling to assemble all 20something of them into a pile that wouldn't immediately fall over, we got our back poems, Greek mythology quizzes, and vocab list #4 sentences. (Unfortunately, trying to stack our Tomes was a lot like the stressful ending to a heated game of Jenga, many fell).
Much like the creation myths we read a few weeks ago, our class soon went from this state of Tome/papers-being-passed-back induced chaos into order. Since our schedule, like usual was full of Odyssey fun, we got a move on it and started our discussion. It began by Ms. Wray telling us the incest-filled story of the House of Atreus, which is repeatedly brought up throughout The Odyssey. This led us to split into small group discussions with our table mates, where we were given a short section of the text and instructed to summarize, analyze, and present to the class. Presenting AKA discussing AKA a class group discussion essentially broke down all of the important happenings and their significances in Books 1&2 of The Odyssey. This was insightful and very helpful for those who, like me, get a little confused by the introduction of 23059834059828394 characters with unpronounceable names in the span of 30 pages. With each group/table presenting their sections, some important questions were raised. Meg's asking of, "Would humans get fried by the sight of a god?" made all of us stare into space for a moment just to simply internalize such an interesting point. In this brief period of deep thought, an omen was delivered to us by Zeus. Not only did the rain appear to be flooding the parking lot below us, huge amounts of thunder grumbled and the sky was illuminated by feisty bolts of lightning. This divine intervention was likely just a satisfactory round of applause from the Man, Zeus. After this surreal moment, we continued chugging along in our discussion, and came to the conclusion that in Homer's portrayal of Telemachus, he pokes a bit of fun at him. Just as we were wrapping up, from outside we heard someone call "Did you order a jet ski?" and unanimously embraced the Oregonian pride rooted deeply within us.
This discussion gave us all (hopefully), a good feel for The Odyssey, and reassured us that the horror stories delivered by the class of 2015 surely can't be true. With less than a minute left in the period, our discussion was over and we concluded as usual (APEuro students freaking out about whether or not there would be a surprise test the next period, and everyone else just staring oddly at them). As we walked out the door, we turned in our study guide questions and that was that. Ms. Wray's echoed "have a good weekend, everybody!" followed us down the hallway, and we left with a sense of satisfaction that we had survived another week of Honors English. So with that, I hope that everyone has the greatest weekend ever. I hope you watch Orange is the New Black on Netlfix (highly recommended) or relive your childhood glory days by watching Halloweentown (and Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge, and Halloweentown High, and Return to Halloweentown). Whatever you decide to do, don't stress out too much about your homework and do something fun and cool that'll make a good story to tell the rest of us on Monday!!! :))))
To start the class, Ms.Wray read the poem, "Spelling" by Margaret Atwood. We then started classwork with grammar Tome #2, "Adjectival Clauses". (Used to modify a noun or pronoun). What's the conjugation of "kapeesh"? After finishing the tome, we unfortunately took a quiz on greek figures. According to Steve, a cyclops embodies Miley Cyrus. The next activity was a series of skits showing xenia, hubris, hamartia, arete, metis, kleos, epithet, epic simile and dactylic hexameter. We then learned about Epic Poetry. It begins with an invocation of a muse, starts in action, vast setting, hero, supernatural intervention, important figures and uses epic similes. It also includes and epic hero who on an adventure that decides the fate of a population. This was an intro to the Odyssey by Homer. We ended class by beginning the Odyssey on page 77.
On Friday, class started out great with the help of Nora's amazing cupcakes (Thank you so much again Nora!). Then Mark proceeded to call Quincy because he had no partner. Unfortunately, Quincy did not pick up.
Getting to the important details, Mrs. Wray gave us a reminder about our Lit Term Projects. Don't forget to mark the lit terms you finish and turn in on your pink tracker sheet! That way you won't resubmit the same one again and make more work for yourself.
Then we discussed our East of Eden essays. Yay. Luckily, Mrs. Wray said that we can sign up for a conference with her and have an opportunity for revision (not of the whole paper though). She will put a sign up sheet on the wiki and there are no limited amount of spots so sign up if you wish! She also reminded us that the importance of this first essay was to learn, so let's not stress to much :)
The last announcement was about how you can win a $20 gift card to Bridgeport Village! If you submit a teen book review to the Lake Oswego Public Library from 10/15 to 12/15 you have a chance to win! There are several gift cards so start writing those reviews :)
Next we worked on revising our Thesis. Mrs. Wray told us that the thesis was both the most important and challenging part of a paper. We discussed what we knew about writing a thesis (asserting a claim, etc.). Then Mrs. Wray showed us various techniques, rules, and information about writing a solid Thesis. These are on the white sheet with the boxes that she handed out the day we got our essays. Some of these are: to have an aspect of suprise, to avoid summarizing the plot, to shape the paper to the purpose, to say something about the text that you discuss exclusively, and more. Then we worked on revising our Thesis statements from our East of Eden essays with our table partners. After that we worked on the paragraph structure of our essays. Mrs. Wray had us go through and mark whether our topic sentences (from the essays) had claims or not. Due to the limited amount of time, we did not get too far but for homework (which is all on the 10H homework tab) we were assigned to rewrite our thesis, or start a new one if it seemed impossible to rewrite the old one, and to revise one body paragraph.
After that, people who didn't finish the Trojan war timelines quickly added final touches, and we discussed about what we thought were the most important parts of the war. Some events that were brought up included Paris' Judgement and the Trojan Horse (ambushing Troy).
For the last 10 or so minutes of class, Mrs. Wray talked about how we would be starting The Odyssey. She gave us a tip to refer to the last pages of our copies for character names and pronunciations (which are extremely difficult...). She then explained a bit about the background of the novel and told us that nothing is in chronological order in the book. Unfortunately, due to the homecoming parade, class was cut 20 minutes short so that is about as far as we got.
Sorry for the late post, I got home from the football game late! Hope everyone has a wonderful rest of their weekend and a shout out to Lauren for being HC princess :)
Today, Ms. Wray announced that she was finally going to hand back our East of Eden essays. This was met with a symphony of whispers and groans. Once the noise level had died down, Ms. Wray felt the need to justify, in advance, the grades which we still had yet to see. Apparently this disclaimer was to prevent various objects from being thrown at her as the class left the classroom and left us to wonder exactly how traumitized we would truly be once we got our papers back.
After a bit of searching for the evasive stack of papers, Ms. Wray handed back our vocabulary quizzes. Unfourtunately, we still haven't earned any baked goods.
Our next activity began with a promise that it was going to be "something fun!" and ended with the surprise appearance of a squeegee and a celestial weenis. After a quick transition, Ms. Wray began checking out iPads to the class alphabetically. There were a few complications with the iPads, such as how Nora's Google Drive was in French and one iPad had been changed into chinese, but they were quickly resolved. In addition, Mark attempted to organize the apps into various folders, but decided against the plan after recieving a "look" from Ms. Wray. Before we could get started on the assignment, there was a brief interuption from Wyatt and SaraJane who came in to serve coffee. Once Ms. Wray's coffee needs had been settled, she began to explain our task. We were instructed to list out five of our favorite words on the Google Docs that Ms. Wray had shared with us. She shared a list of her five favorite words with us, including the word "twee", which prompted an onslaught of "tweeing". The list proved to be quite extensive, and even included a word in Latin. Initially, Ms. Wray had planned for each of us to write a poem individually, but the class was able to convince her to change her mind. In the end, we decided to write a poem as a class, with each row completing two lines. The only limitation was to avoid using comic sans and the purpose of the poem was to describe a somersault. These semi-vague guidelines allowed our collective creativity to take hold and the resulting poem had several surprising plot twists.
Next, we were told to get into pairs and craft a timeline for the events of the Trojan War. While we did this, Ms. Wray came around and handed everyone a mysterious scrap of paper with the names of various greek gods and goddesses. She went on to explain that our homework is to make a 3-5 slide powerpoint on the topic that we were given and to include images and citations. We were also given an ominous sheet of paper with the dreaded word "thesis" scattered across the page. This ominous handout remained largely unexplained. The end of class was spent frantically trying to gather our belongings and silently awaiting the arrival of our East of Eden essays before sprinting out of class.
"If someone ever wants to identify an honors english student, their best bet is to look for the kids that are too busy flipping through pages and searching for their grade that they can't form cohherent responses to simple questions." -A (Slightly Annoyed) Junior in My A4 Class
We had a substitute teacher today, who as it turns out was from the mysterious northern land known as Canada. Class started off with our third vocab quiz. While "Staying Alive" was sadly not played, the fact that we were given candy afterwards more than made up for it. Once everyone had finished with the quizzes we broke into three large groups to discuss the myths of Theseus, Perseus, and Hercules in depth, share our visual myth representations, and fill out the note sheets that had been provided to us. After this task was wrapped up we counted everyone off by threes so as to mix the groups together. Then, in each discussion circle, we took turns summarizing the myths we had studied while those who were not speaking took notes on them; this activity took us to the end of class. All in all, it was a rather fun and informative class period.
Note: Apologies for my belated posting. I went on a trip immediately after school let out on Thursday, and this is the first opportunity I have had this weekend to update the wiki.
Okay, maybe that was a little over-dramatic, but starting off English class with adverbial practice is basically the same thing.
Luckily though, everyone survived. No coffins needed. And adverbials were conquered yet again.
But wait, there's more!
Because we managed to finish the entire grammar lesson in 5 minutes (a stark contrast to the 40 minutes we took last time), Ms. Wray passed out candy to everyone. #winning. #we'reallowedtousehashtagsright.
Next on miniscule-events-from-our-day-that-no-one-remembers, Ms. Wray proceeded to comfort several students who had a bad case of the sniffles. Try not to get sick, guys! :) Drink fluids, get a flu shot, get lots of slee-HAH.
After the beautiful sniffling symphony finished, Ms. Wray also passed back writing folders from last year, and explained the new policy to pass them back after each year.
Not long afterwards, Steve and Anika had to leave to attend a class senator meeting and something about AP Euro club, respectively. We missed you guys! <3
Then, Ms. Wray passed back our vocab sentences/stories and complimented many of us on our creativity. Jinghui did something about a guy named Douglas, Morgan wrote about vikings, and I wrote about clowns fighting for equality.
That's right. I went there. *does a cool dance move and trips over a desk*
Anyway...
Then we catapulted into our discussion. Ms. Wray, along with the Bible experts in the class, led us through the complicated family lineage of Abraham, which admittedly I forgot the moment I looked away from the board. Oops.
First off, we focused on who we considered to be the least heroic out of the three stories we read: Abraham, Joseph, and David. Some people argued that Abraham was the least heroic, and brought up Abraham's fatal flaw––extreme loyalty––and its negative effect on his son, Isaac. Or Ishmael. Whichever one got the short end of the stick and was almost sacrificed. On second thought, Abraham just didn't do a good job at the whole father-son bonding thing in general, as his other son was banished. Eh.
Those who vouched for Abraham being the least heroic also mentioned his lack of drive and will, which are things that are often correlated with heroes. Abraham always obeyed God's demands and never took charge for himself, even when faced with a morally bad decision like sacrificing his own son. Some even compared Abraham to a coward. The point of Abraham's appearance was also brought up, adding how his old, feeble appearance makes it hard to see him as a heroic figure.
On the other hand, those that saw Abraham in a more positive light argued that his loyalty is more like perseverance. They pointed out that Abraham's extreme loyalty to God could be seen as an extreme love for God, being so moving that Abraham would be willing to do the unspeakable if God asked. Abraham is not fearful of the consequences of defying God, but rather, he couldn't possibly defy God because he is so devoted. People also said that Abraham's actions make him valiant, as it is challenging to go against one's beliefs and morals.
I found a video that connects to our whole hero discussion (kinda...). I promise you will like it.... just click >.< - Jessica
Now back to Serena's scribe notes :)
(There were a lot of other great points made, but then this post would become excessively long^2 because it is already excessively long. And no one likes quadratics.)
The remainder of our class was spent reading "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young" by Wilfred Owen on page 79. Each row was assigned two lines of the poem and instructed to carefully analyze each word and what it adds to the meaning of the poem. Some groups made connections to WW1, as Owen was a soldier, and sadly died one week before the end of the war at the age of 25. The difference between tone and mood was established (tone is the author's attitude, while mood is the general feeling of the poem.)
As always, we were avidly discussing well into the last few seconds of class. I wonder if there will ever come a day that we actually finish before the bell rings...
And now, dear reader, I must head to bed so I can get a solid 5 hours of sleep tonight. (Ms. Wray, pretend you didn't see that. I'm a good student, I swear.)
Goodnight, fellow sleep-deprived friend!
(Now here's a video of a bunny eating a raspberry. Excuse me while I gush incoherently over my computer screen.)
Today class began with the pleasant surprise of a new student named Drew who came to Lake Oswego all the way from Pennsylvania! He shared a few things about himself, such as his love for outdoor activities, as well as his hobby of listening to Indy rock music. He and Mark found that they have something in common in their mutual like for jazz. After being introduced to our new student, we began to analyze the archetype of a hero and we discussed how our idea of what a hero is has changed over time. A wide variety of compelling ideas were shared during the discussion, but these are a few noteworthy ones that I jotted down:
Heroes are a reflection of what each culture values
A hero is someone who can bring happiness where there is none
A hero must take action regardless of personal benefits
Heroes used to be worshipped and celebrated, but now our heroes are humble people who often go unnoticed (we typically don't refer to celebrities as heroes)
Greater leaders are less publicized; the celebrities and people whose whereabouts are known to everyone each day are not the true heroes, but rather people such as policeman and firefighters who preserve humanity are heroic
Heroes stick to what they believe in and do not back down from opposition
In society today, we value the underdog; we support people as they rise and when they get to the top, we turn our backs on them and are no longer interested
We can relate to the underdogs because the idea that we could potentially be an underdog empowers us
Heroes used to work through divine powers, but now they are driven by individualism
A defining trait of heroes is humility
We can use heroes as a way to live vicariously through other people
Heroes can also inspire passiveness because we rely on them so much
Heroes provide salvation (in ancient times, possible in the form of food or shelter, but now, in the form of an idea)
Heroes always have a fatal flaw that reminds us that they are human
After our enlightening discussion on the layered meanings of a hero and the ways in which heroes have evolved from their original archetype, we read an article about a novel that was written during the time of 9/11 that contradicted the idea of a hero that was inspired by this tragic event. Post 9/11, the heroes were the firefighters and policemen who were saving lives, as opposed to the people who were compelled to make changes without the goal of defeating an opponent, as was written in the article. We discussed the following general questions with regards to the article: Does the hero always need an enemy? Do we still look to heroes to fight in the face of evil as opposed to bring proactive ourselves? Are heroes relevant when evil is not present?
Lastly, class concluded with brief small group discussions on the biblical stories of "Abraham," "Joseph," and "David." Although we did not have much time to discuss, we were able to touch on the varying aspects of these biblical heroes that set them apart, and whether, as readers who are part of modern society, we necessarily see all three of these figures as heroes.
Sorry these are so late everyone... clearly I am a challenged wiki user. I know you were all very anxious to see the scribe notes since you started writing them yourselves, so at last, here they are! :)
[[tel:10/3/2014|10/3/2014]] Shockingly, nothing at all happened on this day other than some vague mumbling and the revelation that I (Morgan) look like John Green.
Morgan, that was a beautiful scribe entry. Love, Mark
^ A little more happened that day, so I'll add some details: We welcomed Phillip (his name is Drew not Phillip) to the class, and we also shared observations we had among the 3 stories of "Joseph", "David", and "Abraham". We discussed about the relationship of God to Man, and said something relating to 9/11. In addendum, I inhaled and exhaled to fuel my electron transport chain, which carried out basic bodily functions such as removing carbon dioxide waste from my cells while absorbing lipids. Mmm. It was 75 degrees Fahrenheit with a 4 mph tailwind. A biker drowned out the class for a moment with the relentless engine of his/her Harley Davidson motorcycle. I had a premonition that Cameron Dean would wreck Homecoming. Can this count as my scribe participation? (Jinghui).
Who ever was scribe on 10/3/14 needs to post his/her notes. Tsk tsk... ;P (Besides.. I had a cool song to add that had something to do with our class discussion)
Adios muchachos. See you all tomorrow... ugh school.... :/
As we drifted into the classroom in response to the bell, Ms. Wray informed us to arrange our desks in a circle, which could only indicate one thing…..a discussion! Once we had adjusted the lop sided shape so that everyone could fit, Ms. Wray read to us the poem “Traveling through the Dark” by William E. Stafford. The first two lines were met with slightly shocked responses from the class.
Here is the link for the poem for those who are interested: __http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171495__
The instructions for the Tomes were clarified and Ms. Wray informed us that the Tomes would be due anywhere during the next three weeks. The due date will be announced once it has been finalized, and there will be no surprise Tome turn-ins, much to our relief!
Here are the instructions for the Tomes:
There will be two separate table of contents, one for normal Tome entries and the other one for vocabulary. The vocabulary entries will not be part of the normal entries, thus the pages will be numbered separately.
The Tomes will consist of four main sections, one for each quarter.
Once Ms. Wray had straightened out the expectations for the Tomes, she moved us into…..GRAMMAR! She resolved the confusion surrounding last class’s grammar lecture with sentence diagrams, which allowed for us to see the difference between adverbial and adjectival sentences.
After we had our grammar discussion, we proceeded with a poetry discussion! Ms. Wray informed us that we had ten minutes to discuss each poem, although this instruction was soon ignored. Eighteen minutes passed and we were in a deep discussion analyzing the poem “End of Summer”. Some very insightful observations were made, and even though we all read it in our own ways, the class concluded that this poem illustrated the end of youth as the narrator realized that the final destination was death, and that all of his dreams and opportunities died within the winter’s cruel wind. Yes, it was a very pessimistic poem. The next poem we advanced with was “The Red Wagon”, which was read by the majority of the class. This poem was met with widely different observations, including the Alzheimer view presented by Sarah, which was followed with a short lecture from Ms. Wray informing us not to read too much obscurity into the text. Aside from the different perspectives each of us had, we were all able to agree that the poem portrayed a young boy’s journey through life and the responsibilities that come with adulthood. The red wagon the boy received for his birthday carried him down the road of life and passed the different stages of his existence until it met a broad plane where the sun was setting, a symbolization of the peace death offers. Out of sensitivity of time, we moved on to analyze “Eden is that Old Fashioned House” which was chosen by the minority of the class. The perspectives of this poem were relatively similar. Each observation discussed the processes of drifting away, by choice, from childlike innocence and facing reality. The poem demonstrated how individuals takes the ease of childhood for granted and it is only when something is lost that it is missed.
Wrapping up the class, Ms. Wray stopped the discussion and asked us to turn in our poetry analysis. A couple of minutes before the bell rang, she communicated to us our homework for the night. The bell rang, and we were released to carry out our day.
The day started off pretty normally. The bell rang, but of course no one paid any mind to it and just kept on chattering with their friends. After Ms. Wray quieted the class, she had us turn in our vocab sentences and then announced that a grand total of FOUR people had already turned in part of their Lit Terms project. She suggested that everyone get started so that we won't be crunched for time next quarter. Also she read off the names of the people who got 100% on the last vocab quiz. Unfortunately, we did not earn baked goods as five people did not quite reach a 100%. It's okay though. We'll all do a better job next time!
The poem today was "Mother to Son" my Langston Hughes. There were many sounds of recognition as Ms. Wray read the opening lines.
After that, we got our Creation Skit scores back. There was much chatter as we all discussed our scores and critiques.
Then we came to the first lesson of today's class. GRAMMAR (dramatic eye-roll courtesy of Sarah). We learned about adverbials. Here is a quick synopsis of the lesson: Adverbial - Any single-word adverb or adverbial phrase or clause that describes the verb or the whole subject+verb as a unit. An adverbial usually tells how, when, where, or why (about the verb). Examples: Quietly, the refugees leaned against the walls of the ruck Because the truck bounced on the bumpy road, the child had not slept in two days,
Because people were confused, Ms. Wray said that we'd go over adverbials again on Wednesday. Then we moved on to a quick chat about our Think Pieces. According to our mini classroom poll, nobody read "Janet's Waking" because we had all read it last year in ACS.
Next we moved on to Thomas Cole's picture gallery. The rest of class was spent discussing the gallery and the discussion was fairly in depth. We talked up until the bell rang.*
Homework: There was no homework assigned to us today, so instead make sure to get plenty of sleep and rest tonight and tomorrow.
*Disclaimer: I'm sorry, but I am far too tired to go in depth about the discussion from today's class, but please feel free to add any details that you thought were important.
9/25/14 Sarah Kwartler
Well, you can tell by the way I mark my book,
I’m an Honors English kid: with fishbowl talk.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin alive, stayin alive. Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin alive.
There you have it, the Honors English version of the famous Bee Gees’ song. I suppose that the song was there to encourage us to get 100% on the 25-question vocabulary quiz in hopes of getting, you guessed it: BAKED GOODS! Though we were invited to dance to the wonderful music, we were all too listless, except for Jessica and Isabelle who proved that they are the Dancing Queens.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_izvAbhExY
After the daily poem, we resumed our Flood Myths discussions. Here’s a quick briefing on some fantastic comments.
-Esteban, Jinghui, and Morgan: Created an analogy to a Detroit nightclub that was much better than any of Foster’s, so that makes them Mega-Professors.
-Nora, Katherine, and Isabelle: Reached the conclusion that water is life and death, and that the floods aren’t destruction, but the cleansings of sin.
-Kamala, Emi, and Meg: Shared their observations about the animals in the myths and discussed the role of women in the myths.
-Serena, Jessica, Anika, and I: The ripple effect of sins, or as I put it, one drop of poison destroys the well.
-To the other groups that I didn’t mention, I’m sure that you made amazing comments, but I was too lazy to write them down. Don’t blame me; I am Fortune’s fool. I probably was fated to write that. Now, I’m going to exert my free will and stop referencing Romeo and Juliet because it is so 1590s.
By the time that we finished discussing the Flood Myths, the minute hand was ticking closer to 1:05. Nevertheless, Ms. Wray shooed us out the door to do a speed gallery walk of our flood myth artwork. Thanks to the rush, I doubt that any of us actually wrote down any comments. However, I did have a few thoughts about the artwork:
-Best color blending: Kamala
-Best symbols: Serena
-Best A.P. European History Great Chain of Being Triangles: Nora
-Best Stick Figures: Esteban, but it was a close race.
For the aforementioned people, please feel free to donate your art talent to me.
Anyways, by the time we returned to the classroom, it was 1:04 (I know this because I finally found my watch) and all of us were eager to pack up. Yet, Ms. Wray still assigned us a poetry analysis and vocabulary sentences that we will all dread during the coming weekend. Okay, so maybe not the vocabulary sentences because those are helpful and at least she was generous enough to allow us to get some sleep this week by delaying the poetry analysis.
Great. I wrote too much again. I should probably stop now and go watch the end of the Giants football game. Go Giants and have a marvelous weekend!
9/23/14 Morgan Lloyd
As the day started off, we wandered into class, regaled in our costumes scrounged from common household items in a manner to make McGyver proud. Little did we know what was in store for us today and the horror that we would come to face. Today was Creation Myth Skit day, a day we will never forget.
It was also Dogs in Politics day, the manner of which was quite confusing to the class. Does this mean that dogs should be elected to office or that more humans in office should adopt a pet? I, for one, am for the latter theory.
From there we passed out the PSAT brochures, an event that I have unsuccessfully tried to block from my memory. I was quite surprised by the depth of knowledge that the class seemed to have regarding the subject, as our poor scribe knows next to nothing about the test. Knowing is half the battle, though, so perhaps I should start looking into these matters.
After that we moved to our skits. We began with the riveting tale of “Bachelorita”, a creation myth involving three lovestruck men battling it out for the hand of the Creator (Katy Howells) in marriage. After a lengthy ocean-based pun battle, two of the men shut the full cup and Man #3, played by our own Steve Dobrioglo, was the winner.
Next we had “The Cooler Creation”, which I think would have made a spectacular banned Captain Planet episode. (Video below for those who never watched the show.)
We began with the lovely Creator, played by Jinghui Lou, giving birth to the Earth itself in a rather literal manner, and from there creating a variety of wondrous creatures. It’s a shame he/she never truly seemed to know what was going on. Better luck next time, eh?
Next was our own skit, which I can’t really describe since I was acting in it. It was fantastic, moving on.
“Flawless” was next, describing a time when men thought themselves superior to woman until they were taught otherwise by the women inspired by the sweet tones of Beyoncé, performed by Serena Zhang. All the single ladies soon settled things right, leading to the utopian society that I wish we had today. It’ll happen sooner or later, I suppose.
Last but not least we had “Ireaminity”, which I most definitely spelled wrong, the tale of a matriarchal society and their touching creation story. When Darkness cried tears of isolation, I found myself crying a little too. Comment if you agree. All in all it was a very well done skit to cap off the other amazing performances.
After that we moved to a flood myth discussion, talking about our interactions with the different myths of the packet and our own experiences with these myths. One question stood, overarching the entire conversation; was is genocide, or Genesis? It’s like a Zen riddle, huh? But unfortunately, we ran out of time and had to leave the bulk of the discussion for Thursday. Happily we left the classroom and the day was over. Truly it was one for the annals.
And now, for your entertainment, a shrimp on a treadmill.
And if anyone knows how to embed the videos in the thing please do
9/19/14 MeganMSmith
Today, the class had an air of humor and slight desire to go home, as is typical of Fridays in class. Ms. Wray started the class by expressing her gratitude for meeting our parents at Parent Night, and how she could see why we are all such lovely people. Thanks, Ms. Wray. We really are amazing people due to our parents' genetics and methods of upbringing.
Then, with the logistical discussions of last night's homework (work on the myth skit), she addressed some of the issues with Google Docs and how if you were using a school-issued email, there were some problems regarding discussions and chats in documents. This led into a brief yet fascinating tangent about the issues with technology and how it is affecting (not effecting) our society and its standards. The general consensus seemed to be that while the possibility of major corporations or government agencies using technology (ie, cell phones, computers, social media sites) to glean information might be helpful in protecting the country from threats might be too extreme of an invasion of privacy. I, personally, think that it might be okay to have entities monitoring phones and social media isn't too horrible because of the benefits of technology. Besides, they'd probably see us rocking the Snapchat double chin face 80% of the time. Ms. Wray recommended http://The Circle by Dave Eggers for a fictional interpretation of this social issue.
Ms. Wray also expressed appreciation for the humor and cooperation expressed in Scribe notes. Thanks for the expectations on my day to do the scribing. But seriously, these things can be comedy gold.
Also, go see Ms. Wray if you're interested in LitPo (literary/poetry/all things word) Club. Next meeting is at break in the next few days? (if anyone knows anything else about the date please edit it in here)
Then, we had a pop quiz, much to the agony of most students. It was the University of Mottsburgh's Grammar Income test, which claimed to predict an individual's future income based on their knowledge of grammar. Most students scored lower than they expected, and this was quite the travesty to some. However, it was revealed that this was just a made-up exercise about the 20 most common grammar errors in the English language. There was no study, the University of Mottsburgh isn't real, and Dr. Edward McCormick wasn't real. Grammar is not the sole measure of intelligence, and intelligence isn't the sole measure of employability. (Still, put some effort into your writing. Seriously.) (You all are fine, but other people might not be.) So even if your grammar stinks right now, that can be fixed with education! We will start our grammar unit next class on Tuesday so that Tuesday and the others can become "employable," at least by the fictional Dr. McCormick's predictions.
Also on the subject of grammar, Ms. Wray showed an amusing YouTube video in class. Weird Al Yankovich, being the force of crazy-haired good he is in this world, had taken Robin Thicke's horrifying, dehumanizing, rape culture-perpetuating song "Blurred Lines" and covered it in the grammatically correct and catchy "Word Crimes," which we can all agree is better than the origional.
Here's to Weird Al. May he live long and continue making funny and relevant music. And let's hope Robin Thicke goes out, gets a haircut, and reevaluates his life choices and system of morality. What an ignoramus.
We then went off, giggling to ourselves, to work on our skits. I don't know about you guys, but I think my group's skit is going to be fantastic! Super excited for next class!
Our homework for the weekend is to go on the wiki (congrats, if you're reading this you're here and that's half the work) and look over the images Ms. Wray has posted a link to. We should also read the Flood Myths packet and look over the Loss-Quest handout. We are then to complete a drawing featuring common elements of the Flood Myths/Loss Quest Archetype instead of a Venn Diagram. In addition, work with your skit groups to polish your final script and prepare for the performance on Tuesday.
Happy Weekend! --Meg
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 9/17/14 Rhys Richmond
Mrs. Wray started the class off with a nice scenic picture of a mountain. The class failed to understand why the picture was there until she prompted us with several motions and questions. One person exclaimed "Hump day!" which lead to Mrs. Wray explaining why she did not want to google image search the word "hump", instead searching for "pretty/scenic green mountains/hills/peak". This lead to a brief discussion during which several classmates told Mrs. Wray she should have searched for the "Hump Day" Geico commercial (see below).
After the amusing conversation subsided, Mrs. Wray asked the class if we wanted to see our first vocabulary tests back (the answer, a resounding "yes"). After everyone reviewed their grades, Mrs. Wray pointed out the location of the "100% club" list in the classroom (the rear bulletin board) and reminded us that if we got a 100% on every vocab test we would not have to take the vocabulary section of the final in January. After remarking that she was sad she did not get to bake cookies for the class, she reminded us of the Sophomore Honors English Quizlet and announced an extra credit opportunity: * If you sign up for losophshonors (you can find a link on the left-hand side of this wiki) by Thursday, you get extra credit! (so Mrs. Wray can stalk your vocab studying progress! :)**
Mrs. Wray then went on to discuss the new-this-year Tome. Since she had already had several students ask her questions about the purpose/organization/content of the Tome, she told us several facts about the Tome to hopefully help us grasp it better:
The Tome is an active Transaction - Mrs. Wray gives you input, and the Tome acts as a function (think Algebra!!) for you to produce output
The Tome is for interaction and interpretation on a deeper level.
You must interact with the Tome to avoid it turning into "busy work" for you to do and for Mrs. Wray to grade
Still, several classmates had questions regarding whats, whys, whens and wheres - but they were easily resolved within 10 minutes of discussion.
From there, Mrs. Wray collected our final drafts of our poems and debated also collecting the Tome entry where we drew our hands and wrote connections to our fairy tale/song/story inside. The idea was shot down when several students remarked that their "hands" could not be easily cut out.
From there, Mrs. Wray went over the late work policy (daily work is not accepted late, cumulative assignments are accepted late with a penalty of 10% per day late) and added a small amendment. Now, a student may have ONE "freebie" card per semester where they may turn in a late assignment late with no penalty. Several students have already cashed in their freebie, but the majority of the class still has their "one-off" intact.
Then, with half of the class remaining, Mrs. Wray passed out "Honest" notecards and asked us to rate East of Eden on a scale of 1-10, justify the rating with a sentence and write down any discussion topics that we may have wanted to discuss but didn't get a chance to in our structured Fish-Bowl discussion groups. While most students were generous with 7-10 ratings of the book, Mrs. Wray exclaimed with faux-horror when she discovered that an unidentified someone had rated the book 4/10 (along with two others rating it 5/10). Mrs. Wray then let us know that the majority of us (me included) thought that the book was too long/got boring in certain sections.
Next, Mrs. Wray exclaimed, "We're almost to the fun part!" This was met with a few questioning looks and several appreciative sounds from the class. But before we could get to the "fun" part, Mrs. Wray numbered us off 1-5 and asked us to get together with our respective number groups. There, we discussed the two packets of myth readings we have accomplished so far. Mrs. Wray made sure we knew that there are many, many ways to look at and analyze myth and to not think David Leeming (the author) has a monopoly on myth interpretation. In our group discussions, we compared our Venn Diagrams of 3/5 myths. After roughly 5 minutes, Mrs. Wray brought the discussion back out to the class, asking individual groups to provide insight on what was alike/different across the various creation myths.
This discussion quickly turned into debating the ethical qualities of snakes (as they appeared in several of our Creationism stories) and the possibility that humans dislike them either because A. We are jealous of their ability to slither, B. They could have been thought of as animals who had sinned in the past (due to some Christians having previously believed that cripples were crippled because of their sins) or C. The Human evolution-oriented innate response of fear due to some snakes being poisonous. From that point, each numbered group had a creation myth from the packet to discuss. Unfortunately, my group received the Mesopotamian. Out of five people, no one had a clue what the exact plot line referred to or how to even begin to discuss it. Thankfully, Mrs. Wray told us that we would never be tested on the Mesopotamian creation myth, a sentiment met with extremely thankful sighs from the students.
Finally, Mrs. Wray moved to the "fun" part of the class - which turned out to be a homework assignment. Each of the 5 groups is in charge of creating a creation myth skit that meets the five criteria for a myth (traditional tale/story, set in past, ostensibly "true", often explain, justify, instruct or warn). The remainder of the class was devoted to brainstorming. The following buzz of chatter was often interrupted with a loud burst of laughter from a group or two. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wray prowled the classroom, occasionally asking each group what they had thought of so far. In the final minutes of period A3, Mrs. Wray instructed us to create a google doc shared with all members of our group. In addition, we must share the doc with her so she can check up on our progress.
As everyone readied their backpacks, Mrs. Wray ended the class with the remark that she was very glad that a certain group had scrapped their idea of having a creationism myth start with a piece of poop in a toilet bowl. This opinion was met with much laughter just as the bell rang.
! - Make sure you contribute to your groups Google Doc in a timely matter - it's not fair to your classmates if you wait until 11PM on Thursday, September 18th to write your part.
9/15/14 Quincy Hyun
Today was the first day of our class' new assigned seating arrangement which resulted in a chorus of sighs and groans. After a few hectic minutes, our class had been officially jumbled, with girls sitting with their new gal pals and what seemed like only a handful of boys scattered throughout the room. Without any further delay, Ms. Wray got right to it. Once we were all settled, we were given two options: take our vocabulary quiz right now at the start of class or postpone it until the end of class. We unanimously decided to get this thing over with. In order to retain my "academic integrity" I shall not describe the test. I won't mention that it was multiple choice, or that we had to know the parts of speech for our vocabulary words which had caught me off guard, hypothetically speaking of course. After the last quiz paper was in (mine) Ms. Wray was already swooping in and out of the desks, handing us our second vocab sheet; this one with 15 brand new words that I suspect that we will be encountering soon in our readings. Next up, was our Tome Syllabus. Much like Mrs. Huss' Learning Logs portfolio the freshman Honors English class completed last year, the Tome is basically a collective story of each student's individual experiences in this class. I am very excited to see what my own Tome looks like by the end of the year.
The daily poem was "Mirrors" by Sylvia Plath which, in my opinion, was a little too dark for me. I mean, the woman in the story sees exactly what she dreads in her mirror everyday yet she constantly goes back to check on it? The purpose of the mirror in the poem is to strip away all of the masks that the woman has over herself, and reveals who she really is inside. At the root of this poem, Plath is trying to show us the battle between our inner and outer selves.
After the daily poem, we moved onto our own, peer editing the drafts of our own classmates. Mark generously filled my paper with constructive comments including "woah dawg" and "ay ay!" which gave me a lot of confidence in the construction of the final draft of our poem, due next class. We were given around 10 minutes to edit our peer's drafts.
Immediately afterwards we were given yet another handout (thank goodness no one was gone today because they would have to hunt down a lot of papers). This one was a more in depth checklist for revising and writing poetry. We could have used that BEFORE we marked up each others papers... but it is a very helpful sheet to have and it will really help clear up my future poetry. Now after all that sitting and listening, we got a quick water break, though little did I know Ms. Wray had saved the real meat and potatoes of the class for when we got back.
Once our class filed in once again, Steve, our newly elected class senator, gave a short speech on the news he got from his first senator meeting. However, he had recently lost a contact in his right eye and his handwriting was never superb to start with (sorry Steve) and so reading for him was quite the challenge. However, he completed his task with both grace and eloquence as he covered up one of his eyes and held his paper away from his face at arms length.
For the rest of class we proceeded to discuss all of the myths we had read in a full class conference. The topic quickly steered towards the premise of how "youths do not feel the need to learn the scientific way things work and instead use myths and stories to explain the experiences they have so far collected into their own subconscious". After we all had our chance to rephrase this idea in our own way, Sarah and Ms. Wray brought up another question that re-sparked our discussion, "What is the difference between myth and science?" After all, the so called science centuries ago has now been scoffed at and considered a myth. However, who is to say that we ourselves have discovered the "true" science of things. In a thousand years will scientists look at our claims and chuckle to themselves? This question snowballed into the classic question, "Is our view of existence the real view or it is simply a fragment of the universe as a whole?" How can we be right if we are a speck in the universe? And how can we be sure we're right?
These deep questions brought us up to the bell. However, this didn't stop Ms. Wray from letting us know what we needed to complete next class. She explained that she wanted a three-way venn diagram of some of the creation myths we have read, a final draft of our poem, as well as 17 well written sentences that exhibit the proper use of our new vocab words. Work is starting to pile up in Ms. Wray's English Class but I'm sure that we can all handle it. Enjoy the rest of your day/evening/night fellow reader!
Despite being only into the fourth day of class, Serena was already ahead of the game on lit terms, reminding us all that we should probably get a head start on it too.
After routine attendance, where it is becoming increasingly easier to match the names to the face (good job Ms. Wray), but before the poem of the day, was the emptying of folders and gathering of projects from last years Honor English class. While most were reminiscing over their thick stack of papers, Morgan thoughtfully recommended that the stack should be burned.
Today's daily poem was "Same Song" by Pat Mora. This poems accurately portrays the binding stereotypes that are put on teens by society, yet tying in "fairy tale" allusions and intertextuality. We are to use this poem as a template to create our own poems from our stories over the weekend and have a draft ready on Monday (You can change your story if necessary)
Next the class dived into fishbowl discussions, beginning with a brief breakdown of the previous class's fishbowl. The first fishbowl group of the day analyzed to prompt "How do landscape and setting tie into meaning in the novel" (I am just going to give a brief bullet point overview of the discussion for each group)
- seasons of farming represents cycle of growth and rebirth
- exposure to a different setting could have created a different story (i.e. if Caleb and Aron were born in a city vs rural farm)
- in response to the latter point it was brought up that isolation that having the characters isolated helps focus on them (rather than have them in a city where the author would have to also focus on city routines)
- characters from east are fallen, coming from a fallen place
- Lee was from the west making him "unfallen"
- Overall despite where each character was from, everyone was trying to find their own eden
Swiftly after that group had wrapped up, the next group with the prompt "How does John Steinbeck utilize archetypes and Biblical allusion in his book" traded seats with clearly relieved students and began discussing and almost immediately a fascinating topic arose.
- before Salinas valley there was an ocean, the ocean dried up yet some water remained, Samuel Hamilton living in Salinas valley was in a sense walking on water. Plus he could easily find water to make wells.Thusly he could be considered a Christ-like figure.
- another connection was made with Lee, he left the Trask residence for his bookstore, then returns a week later. Symbolizing Lee "dying" then coming back to life more or less.
- back and forth it was discussed who was more of a christ figure Lee or Sam. It was also brought up that Sam could be potentially be God or a prophet
- Kate is not truly evil, more of she isn't aware of what she is missing
- Caleb and Joshua was a parallel legend that stands for Caleb surviving and Aron dying
- Aron could not except reality, creates his own world
- Caleb aware of harsh reality
Last was my group, "how does stein back use characterization to create meaning in the novel". Sadly since I was in that group, I have the least amount of information as to what occurred, seeing how I was trying to find an opportunity to jump (which as you may have noticed were slim thanks to my colleagues already proving my points) But I can tell you that characterization was mostly discussed throughout the other fishbowls. So if you were paying attention during those, then you should have a good idea of what characterization went on.
We began the day with a poem called, "Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad." At first, I thought that the speaker was being pretty insulting to her dad; it wasn't exactly flattering to state that her dad wouldn't drown while swimming. However, the poem's main purpose and tone became apparent at the end – in retrospect, the speaker has recognized that her father had imperfections but was trying his best in life and had a good heart – and I, for one, could not help but cry under my desk.
Ms. Wray passed back our vocabulary sentences, but Quincy, sadly, had forgotten to write his name on his. Maybe next time.
Perhaps more important than Quincy's forgotten name was when everyone shared about his or her favorite or most memorable childhood story. Harry Potter was chosen by multiple people (and for good reason), but there were also some more obscure stories. Going back to Quincy (doesn't it always go back to Quincy?), he chose "Puff the Magic Dragon," a song that his father used to sing to him and one that was his first song to learn on the piano. Nic mentioned Calvin and Hobbes as his favorite childhood story/comic because of Calvin's limitless imagination, and Cami talked about the stories she read by an author of children's Christian books that largely affected her identity in the Church. And, of course, Nora's aunt invented gravy.
Next, Ms. Wray had us continue on our hand activities by writing powerful words, phrases, images, or emotions evoked from our stories around the outline of our hands. For homework, I believe we are supposed to explain how our stories connect to the stories of our life; that is, how they fit in the larger scope of our existence and identity. I've got to hand it to you, Ms. Wray – this activity is pretty cool!
Now it was time for the much anticipated (or dreaded) East of Eden fishbowl discussion. To start things off, Ms. Wray apologized that the Google fish image she chose to represent the fishbowl did not show up on our fishbowl discussion sheet. I, of course, was deeply disappointed, and I could not help but cry under my desk for the second time.
Back to the fishbowl discussion. Ms. Wray assigned everyone to one of the four discussion groups. I was thrilled to get Discussion 1, which was about the nature of good and evil. It is such a fundamentally important topic and is portrayed so skillfully through the contrast of Steinbeck's characters. There was much discussion about how Calvin is the most relatable character in the book, because he represents the human struggle against one's lower nature and shortcomings. Even though Aron seems to act more virtuously, he is often too rigid and inflexible in his beliefs. This was just one of the many great points made during this first discussion, and, luckily, there was no fishing for answers.
Finally, we had the excitement of nominating and voting for this year's class senator. While all of the candidates were very qualified (especially the last one), the class favorite was undoubtedly Steve, who had no idea what the senator does but promised to do a good job of whatever he was supposed to do. Esteban, we are all very proud of you.
It is surprising that this was only the third class of the year; everyone in the class seems to be connecting really well, and all of our discussions have been interesting. I can tell that this is going to be a great year!
Ms. Wray began today's class by pointing out, as Steve mentioned in his previous scribe, the gender-segregated classroom. She promised to integrate the group with a seating chart that everyone is extremely excited to be using next period. After taking roll and attempting to master everyone's names, she explained the losophs wikispace and our vocabulary quizzes and assignments. (The first vocab quiz is on the fifteenth, one week from Monday).
She then moved into introducing our Lit Terms project, putting a final stamp on the beginning of the school year: summer is officially over, projects are in full swing. As she explained, she sensed the fear and apprehension in the room, but she assured that this project, which will be carried out throughout the year and will require us to develop a full understanding of literary devices and their purposes, will help us tremendously in the future.
Before transitioning into our How to Read Literature Like a Professor discussion, Ms. Wray read an interesting poem entitled, "Love Like Salt," by Lisel Muller.
As she pulled out How to Read Literature Like a Professor, it was apparent that we would have a discussion full of varied opinions. Muted groans could be heard from some parts of the class, while others mentioned thinking it was "not that bad." Ms. Wray instructed us to write single-sentence responses to lit log prompts, but reminded us with a smile that strategic punctuation could be used to extend our responses.
When the discussion began and hands started flying in the air, it became clear that our class is full of strong, independent voices. Many felt that Foster was too long-winded and overly-confident of his opinions, and approached literary interpretation too matter-of-factly, but some found the text interesting and helpful. Nic described HtRLLaP as a "toolbox" full of tools and suggestions for approaching complex literature. In response to opinions that using all of Foster's guidelines for reading made reading less enjoyable, Mrs. Wray commented that sometimes it's appropriate to take out the toolbox and use it to help interpret text, and other times, the toolbox can be put away.
After the discussion, yellow papers were passed out, and we were asked to trace our hands. We drew three lines in the middle of our hands: our life line, love line, and health line, and wrote events or things on the lines that were important to each of these parts of our lives.
Before the bell rang, we went through the homework: writing about a story, book, or song that was a part of our childhood, and completing the fishbowl discussion preparation sheet for our East of Eden discussion on Tuesday.
When the class first entered into the room, it quickly split into two sections: boys and girls. While it was revealed that there is a three to one ration correlation between the two genders, no one really cares, although it seems interesting that no one has mentioned that all of the boys huddled together in one side of the room. It was as if they were scared that they might be separated from one another, much like a family of opossums sticks together out of fear of being in contact with the owls of the forest. However, unlike a family of opossums, none of the guys played dead which is always a good sign.
To start off the grand adventure that is Sophomore Honors English, Ms. Wray started off the class by reading the poem "Lines", written by Martha Collins. While yes, the poem did have a rather romantic theme, Ms. Wray pointed out that it can also symbolize all of the connections we will make together as a class throughout the school year. The latter interpretation is more preferable, mostly due to the fact that as a class I think most of us don't think of the entire class in a romantic way (sorry to break it to all who had thought otherwise).
After the poem reading Ms. Wray started attendance, where she discovered all of the nicknames of everyone in the class. For instance, Max likes to pronounce his last name as "Wins". So everybody now has to admit that, yes indeed, Max Wins. What he will win, we will just have to wait and see. It can honestly be anything or everything. Steve (me) has a wide range of nicknames, in which the most known is Esteban. On the other hand, we may have to mark up Mark for not having a nickname this far in the school year.
After attendance, we played a "guess who" type of game where each individual in the class wrote down an activity they did during the summer and the entire class had to guess who did which activity. Ms. Wray said it was fine if we threw the little pieces of paper into the basket where we would keep them, so not surprisingly the class was soon filled with future LeBron James. Well, if LeBron James was not the man he is today (no offense class mates who threw their piece of paper, but I'm just saying: not a single thrown piece of paper was made into the basket). But nonetheless, it was proven that the entire class has a lot of spirit when everyone applauded loudly whenever someone guessed correctly on who their person was. Now, the highlights of the game: Rhys hang-glided, but Nic thought it was Morgan, who rebutted by saying "No way. My life is not that adventurous". This may not be true when we found out that Morgan was a councilor at Tryon Creek, where the little kids would call him "teacher". Katy zip-lined at My Young Life. Anika was at the airport and saw the modern hero Snoop Dogg/Lion. For those who do not know Snoop Doggy Dogg, he is a rapper who was very good friends with Dr. Dre, and who has also made many appearances in film and online videos (if you're really curious to know what I'm talking about, look up "Moses vs Santa Claus" on YouTube). On a related note, before I get carried away by Snoop Dogg's life, Tuesday tried to conjure up river spirits. Nora went to Belgium and learned how to say "only" in Flemish. Nic went to Virginia and saw civil war reenactments. And most exciting of all, Jinghui ate spaghetti while listening to music. (If i did not mention your name/experience, I am really sorry, I'm just trying to keep this brief, which I realized I failed).
We later had to do a poem analysis on a William Carlos Williams poem called "The Great Figure". All of our hard work was proved to be futile as Ms. Wray showed us (through an epic build up of opening a box to show the true answer of the meaning of the poem) that the poem could mean almost anything as it is interpretive. Mark wisely pointed out that it was like that one scene in Kung Fu Panda, which I won't talk about to not spoil it for those who have not seen the movie.
We went over the class syllabus, which was not overly exciting.
We had to fill out a questionnaire about our reading experiences, and most of us did not finish, so it's homework. And speaking of homework, we need to write vocab sentences for our first vocabulary list for homework. We will also need to bring materials and our summer books to next class.
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5-29-15
Today began with open questions about our upcoming creative projects. Mrs. Wray reminded us that along with the artistic piece, we must include a 1/2 to 1 page statement of our work's purpose.
Next, we went over out schedule for the next few class periods. Here's a quick overview:
TUES 6/2: TOTC Creative Projects due, gallery walk, begin exam review
THURS 6/4: Vocab final day! Final lit term due (late lit terms 1/2 credit), exam review
WED 6/10: FINAL EXAM DAY! Scantron and esssay, scantron about TOTC. There is a study guide posted on the wiki, tomes collected at beginning of exam
After we discussed our (very hectic) schedule, we wrote Tome #40, where we reacted to the end of TOTC. (Sydney Carton broke my heart).
While we sat inside and discussed heroic sacrifice, love, revolution, and general sadness, we could hear all the laughter and joy coming from the garden party outside of our window. I think we were all jealous.
We began our discussion about Sydney Carton, and people brought up points such as "it was the best ending ever written", it "shows hope for humanity", "i liked the insertion of the peasant woman", it "tied together the theme of relationships and people coming together", and how "there will always be good and evil in the world". However, that's as far as we got because then: FIRE DRILL.
We spent the next half an hour standing outside in the bright, hot sun and missed the entire rest of class. It was great.
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Isabelle Cullen
5-21-15
Good Evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is your scribe writing and tonight, we are going to take a look at what happened today in Sophomore Honors English. Make some noise!!!
.... Maybe not. Today, as usual, we all encountered the lock door. Once we entered the classroom and settled in for the next hour and a half, Mrs. Wray gave her condolences to the Girl's Lacrosse Team. Though we lost, everyone, especially Lauren speeding up and down the field, gave it their all until the final buzzer. Mrs. Wray did not attend the game but instead tried to follow it live on Twitter. Due to a misunderstanding of an article from last year's championship, Mrs.Wray thought we had won.... *Sigh*. We have another contender heading out for a state title. Good luck Katy at State this weekend for the 4x4 and the 800!!! Next, Mrs. Wray gave us a surprise. we all dread them and stress out over them... A QUOTE QUIZZY!!!! Don't worry. It was not worth very much and will not hurt your grade drastically. After we discussed our Quizzy, the last three motif groups presented their slideshows. The three motif power points will be posted up online but for the purpose of scribing, I will tell you a brief bit about each one. First up, was the motif of Animals. Their claim stated that they are symbolic for the disparity and fighting amongst the classes in France. Next was vengeance and their claim is escaping my groggy memory.... as is the next group, doubles, and their claim... Excuse my poor exhausted memory. After watching some great motif presentations, we started our first literary discussion of TOTC. We discussed the shifting gender dynamics, women in power, the secrets of Dr.Manette, and the lack of trust throughout the book. I liked Mark's comment the most ash eh compared Mr.Carton to Snape. Ah, Snape. The most hated and loved character of Harry Potter. Class concluded and due to Smarter Balance, Mrs. Wray will not be here on Wednesday. Pages for homework will be posted on the wiki.
Enjoy your sleep this weekend, everyone. And enjoy your puppy and all the duties that come with her, Mrs. Wray!
Thursday nights. They are the best of times, they are the worst of times.
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May 19. Or something. Who knows. I'm so stressed I've stopped perceiving time in a linear fashion! At least I got my dialectical journals done.
Meg Smith
We opened class with a discussion on the ease of MP3 essay comments (be sure to listen to them, folks!) and comments on stone ground mustard. Is regular mustard just not the same? Do the stones add flavor? What even is mustard? We just don’t know.
After the MP3/Mustard debacle, Ms. Wray stamped our dialectical journal entries as we discussed them with those around us. If there’s one thing we all can agree on, Honors English has taught us to write quick and intelligent-sounding analyses for just about anything.
Then, we had two in-class motif presentations. The first one, which focused on crowds and the simultaneous loss of and persistence of individuality, had many layers of analysis. It was certainly not an ogreish presentation, and was presented by the all-stars Mark, Drew, Isabelle, and Katherine. The second one focused on the dualities of light and dark as well as the source of hope. This was presented by Nic, Jinghui, Tuesday, and Katy H.
Afterwards, we took out our tomes and began work on Tome 39 which is all about Dickensian Cinema: We created a tableau for our scene and focused on repetition and detail. Each tableau was interesting and dynamic. Morgan stood on a table.
I have a note here about banging on a white board but I don’t remember what that’s about. Lost to the depths of memory, I guess.
“Time isn’t real. Nothing is verifiable. The moon has flesh. Peace.” --Meg
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Friday, May 15th, 2015
Anika Todt
Today began with a small class scandal, in which Jinghui was busted for attempting to gain additional extra credit points by putting his phone, and his phone case up in the front of the classroom. Soon after, we launched into a lively class discussion about Nora's perfume, which apparently smelled fruity. Ms. Wray then accused us of rearranging the desks, though I am unable to confirm, since I have a tendency to arrive just before the bell.
We then kick started the class with a pop quiz! Though it wasn't exactly related to any literary topics I know of. (Then again, I suppose you could say it falls under coming of age, which is rather prevalent in literature.)
Soon after turning in the said quiz, Ms. Wray proceeded to make some clarifications about our tomes. For those that still may be a bit lost:
Tome #33 is the Best of Times，Worst of Times paragraph
Tome #34 is Group Work I
Tome #35 is the Active Reading/Cause and Effect response
Tome #36 is the Tome Discussion Topics
Tome #37 is the two Dialectical Journals we completed for pages 135-192
and Tome #38 is the Favorite Line reflection from the first reading (we forgot to include it earlier）.
After catching up on the tomes, we moved into small groups, and discussed our dialectical journals and Ms. Wray came around and stamped our journals. Ms. Wray also clarified that we should always bring our Tomes to class. While we discussed our observations of the text, Ms. Wray wheeled in the iPads, and we split up yet again to work on creating PowerPoints for our various motifs. We spent most of the rest of the class working on these presentations, since they took longer than expected. Initially we planned to leave time for silent reading but, as usual, we just didn't have the time.
Toward the end of class, there was enough time for two groups to present, while the rest of the presentations were postponed to next class. Following these presentations, Ms. Wray took the time to introduce our Tale of Two Cities project, which is fairly open ended. Make sure to get a handout from her next class if you were absent.
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Dies Lunae, a. d. V Id Mai MMXV (Monday, May 11th, 2015)
Morgan N. Lloyd I
Today, Ms. Wray was absent, and I quickly jumped at the chance to get one more scribe in this year. And so, we come to the likely conclusion of my scribing saga. It’s been a good ride, wouldn’t you say?
Our substitute was no unfamiliar face, but was instead Ms. Rathbun (really hope I got the spelling right), who is beginning to seem like a regular English teacher here. She started the class with the poem “Black Sea”, by Mark Strand, which is worth checking out if you weren’t there. After the usual round of snaps, we were then reminded that we had a quote identification quiz on the first section of Tale of Two Cities. This forced us to rack our brains to remember who was speaking to whom, where, and with what significance. I just put down Monsieur for everything, because there’s so many Monsieurs in this book I knew I had a pretty good chance of getting it right. There were four quotes, but to the surprise of many we only had to do two, so it wasn’t altogether too onerous.
Following that we were broken into groups and assigned one of seven topics to write about, for Tome 35. After a good amount of time for writing, we gathered together and shared our observations. This led to each group sharing their findings with the class. After this interesting discussion, we moved onto an activity less academic and more artistic in nature; creating a poster for a character in (what else) Tale of Two Cities. This took the rest of the class, as we tried to ferret out who had artistic talent amongst us and thought hard over which color would best suit our respective personages. Homework is to do some work on said project, complete Lit Term 37 before the close of the week, and finish Book the Second before the same Friday.
And now, with no explanation, YEE
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Tuesday May 5th, 2015
Max Nguyen
Sorry for the late post, but Happy Cinco De Mayo!
Today, we started out with several classmates performing their memorized poems. Serena gave an awesome poem with plenty of emotion and hand gestures. Nora was slightly intimidated by this, but she performed equally as amazing with her own poem. Nic brought a science fiction poem of his own creation, and Katherine went up to recite a Maya Angelou poem. There was a small discussion about what the title of the first book in the Tale of Two Cities meant, and we talked about why we did or didn't like Dickens' writing style. Mark made the comparison between Dickens' work and the work of a panicked Honors English student. Then, we took the time to do a short tome in which we chose our favorite sentence from the first book and explained why it is so wonderful. That would be tome number 34. Afterwards, we played an extremely fun game in which we had to remember the significance random things from the book. We ended the class by reading through the Wine scene at the beginning of chapter five, and the few paragraphs at the beginning of chapter three on page 15.
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Monday, April 27, 2015
Sophie Weigel
We started off class with the poem Desire by Eamon Grennan. It portrayed a theme I think we can all relate to. Some days, (esp. Mondays) we all just feel like bees hitting against the glass. Next we took the vocab #15 quiz. Afterwards, we got right into peer revisions with a partner in which we went over either a draft or an outline, depending on where you're at in the writing process of the Macbeth essay. We highlighted and made comments on the paper and then discussed. Afterwards, we went to the library and checked out A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, the new novel we will be reading! We came back to the classroom and then went over some reviews and tips to keep in mind while reading the book. Many liked this novel, but it was of the majority opinion that this is a challenging read. Sparknotes and shmoop are both helpful resources to check out after reading, for clarification. Next we went over some basic information and facts about Dickens and the novel, like the time period and the French Revolution. Near the end of class, we got a list of some of the characters and descriptions of them that we'll meet in the novel. We also got a study guide questions hand out for book 1. The novel is divided into three books. Before class got out, we started to read chapter one.
Homework
- Final draft of Macbeth Essay due Friday
- Vocab sentences #16
- Read "Outline of the Revolution" and annotate
- Read Book 1, Chapter 1 ("The Period") answer the questions
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Jinghui Lou
Who reads these?
Today we shared our Independent Reading Creative Projects to the class, including but not limited to:
- Sophie's song, where the singing was so amazing that I forgot the book title it was responding to.
- Jessica's "Gone Girl" clues, which I think relate to the movie.
- Nic's cool astronaut drawing, which involves an astronaut, in space!
- Milo's intense castle drawing in response to "Crispin" by Avi.
- Kamala's nesting dolls to show the different phases of some characters in "Crime and Punishment".
- Nora's carousel drawing for "Catcher in the Rye", where the golden ring is the symbol of maturity, and some dude has to let Phoebe reach for one.
- Other stuff.
And then a Macbeth Discussion, where people thought about:
- Why was the ending brief, but Macbeth's rise to power so long? (Kinda reminds me of that expected "showdown" between Chirag and that other guy in "No Country for Old Men". There is no showdown. The fact you expected one shows how shallow you are.)
- Lady Macbeth not being mentioned enough in the end? (Maybe by saying she was out of the picture, Macbeth did not have anyone to look up to for security. Hence his doom.)
- Why did Macbeth die honorably for all the chaos he created? (The goal wasn't humiliation. It was to reclaim Scotland. Why is a beheading considered honorable?)
- Witches are gods who use humans as playthings.
- Was Macbeth initially good, before King Duncan's murder?
- Was it ambition, or a hope for security that pushed Macbeth to do what he did?
- A circle of violence for the throne: Will there ever be peace?
- If one acts with an evil intent, he is evil. If he is forced, is he still evil? Does one know he is evil?
- Macbeth never was able to fit into his new clothes / his role.
- How every guy wants to be like Macduff, and how every girl names their vibrators after him.
- Future of Scotland not being totally perfect, as everyone put all their hate into Macbeth. A temporary solution?
<--- Homework: Refer to "10H Homework" on side bar.
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Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Steve Dobrioglo
Right after the first lunch bell rung most of the class ran into the classroom... Just kidding! We were locked out, but we still had a lot of fun out in the hallway. All of the AP Euro kids panicked over their next test (two essays in one class period? That's bananas!), everyone else did their own thing, and eventually we were let into the room. From there, we all sat down and started our Individual Reading Project prompt responses... Just kidding! We had to turn in our Macbeth essay first, but after that we were able to start our prompts. After Jinghui bragged about how proud he was about his in-depth analysis of his novel, we had to write two one-page responses to a series of prompts we were given. For those unfortunate ones that weren't at class here are the prompts:
1. Identify the main theme of the novel. What message does the author want the reader to understand about the theme?
2. Write the last sentence of the novel. Is this sentence appropriate and effective as the last sentence of your book? Why or why not?
3. Identify and explain if the novel is based on the workings of the head (meant to make you think) or the workings of the heart (meant to affect you emotionally).
4. Comment on the writer's style. What things do you notice about the author's writing that is interesting or sets him or her apart?
5. Write about how you fit into the story. Are there characters or situations that relate to your own experiences? In what way does this novel relate to you as an individual?
After a little more than twenty minutes (the class demanded an extra eight minutes to finish up), we all got up and went to the English Lab. In there ,we went with our partners from last class and we all performed our awesome physical-interpretations-of-the-lines of the monologue. Everyone was great, however Kaity cheated because she had Mrs. Wray as a partner. After the first round, when Max viciously ripped my paper from my hands like a true Macbeth-ian, we acted out our lines once more, but a little faster and more dramatic. Finally, we had to do it one more time, except we had to find a way to physically connect ourselves to the last pair. That was interesting as we found out that we formed a long and extended chain, which was different than previous classes physical interpretations. Then we left, but some people forgot their phones and had to pick them up after school.
Homework:
Vocab Sentence Quiz
Hard Copy of Macbeth Essay Outline
Final Discussion next class, so prepare
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Monday, April 13, 2015
Drew Vogelsang
We started off the class by going over information about the AP English, which will be happening next class (4/15). Mrs. Wray encourages all of us to take it so that we still have the opportunity to take the class, even if aren't planning on it right now. We then took three relaxing deep breaths, before looking over the schedule for the next couple weeks:
Monday 4/13: act IV discussion
Wednesday 4/15: junior AP entrance exam
Friday 4/17: Act V discussion/activity
Tuesday 4/21: Ind. Novel Creative Project (bring in book) and written response. Macbeth thesis work time and final discussion. Sharing of motif slideshows.
Thursday 4/23: outline of Macbeth essay due. Begin TOTC.
Monday 4/27: draft #1 of Macbeth essay due
Wednesday 4/29: final draft of Macbeth essay
Mrs. Wray then talked to us about Mandalas, which she really enjoys from House of Cards. They are a circular artwork, containing a center image with many symbolic symbols expanding from the sides. She also told us that if anybody is doing a show project (song, slideshow, video, etc.) they will have to present it to the class. There is also still plenty of time to memorize a poem for extra credit, which will be due on the last week of April!
We then had a silent discussion about Act 4 of Macbeth where we responded to prompts of pieces of paper spread out around the room. The class went over many ideas including:
4/9/15
Jessica Seropian
Today was definitely a Thursday. The mood in the room was one of "why can't the week just be over?" At least that's how I felt... Anyways, onto the scribe notes!
After turning in our list 15 vocab sentences and Lit Terms, we huddled into our motif groups to discuss the examples and importance of each motif in Macbeth. We also had to come up with a preliminary claim/thesis for each motif. Don't worry though, our essay will not be about the motifs, and the essay is a progress piece (three cheers for NOT having to do it in class!).
Then, the last presentation was given about Act 3 by the insanely large group of people who were all absent on Tuesday. Max, Sophie, Isabelle, Drew, Cami, and Nora did a wonderful job. :)
In their presentation someone (I believe it was Drew, but I could be wrong...) brought up lines 168-170 in Act 3, Scene 4. Those lines are as follows:
"I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er."
We discussed the importance of these lines and Max decided to compare crossing the river to picking up poop with his bare hands (Sophie told him to go find a shovel, but Max was insistent on using his hands).
Some of the points brought up were:
After that discussion, talked about Scenes 3.5 and 3.6. Some points of discussion:
3.5:
3.6
After that we started to read 4.1 until the bell.
HOMEWORK:
Have a good weekend everyone!
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4/7/15 (Sorry this is so late!)
Quincy Hyun
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3/31/15
Serena Zhang
Greetings, measly earthlings. It is I, Commander Yorbag Zuppsniffer from Planet Garbotron. I have come to take over your puny, pathetic planet, and nothing can stop me. Not your CIA, your FBA, your NSA, your CBS, your LOL...nothing! My first order of business is to eliminate all the frogs of your ecosystem–
*rides in on a leashed (shirtless) Tom Hiddleston and knocks out Barfbag Buttsniffer with a swift kick to the noggin*
Hi-yah! Take that, strange space scum! Although your English was quite good, I must protect our sticky, ribbit-y little friends from extinction, so now your booty is banished to the pits of helalalabooo (cursing is bad.)
*orders Tom to take Barfbag Buttsniffer to the gates of Tartarus* And say hello to Tiresias for me!
(That's right. I'm on a first-name basis with Tom. AND I made an "Odysseus" reference. I'm on fiyah today. *hissing sound*)
Anyway, now that I've officially saved Mr. Frog and his expansive family from destruction, let's proceed with the scribe notes.
'Twas a melancholy start to our day, as Max forlornly grieved about the lack of comments on his Living History paper, which he submitted rather late. Mrs. Wray then feigned shock and sympathy–I think we all know that she secretly has it out for Max–and promised to check her email. I guess we can all give her a break, as her 80-something juniors are also sharing their papers with her. (Please don't read that as the juniors are 80 years old.)
Morgan then lifted up all our spirits with the exciting news of his drive through the Salinas Valley, which we were very thoroughly introduced to by a certain Mr. Steinbeck. Seriously though, he spends like half the book praising its rivers and hills and whatnot. Is there a word for a landscape fetish? Because Mr. Steinbeck, well...yeah. Unfortunately, Morgan's phone died, so he couldn't take pictures, though I'm sure we all have enough imagery of the place to last us a lifetime.
Next, Mrs. Wray revealed her late-night escapades on the Wiki, and said she noticed several people who were up at a time they shouldn't be up adding their comments to the discussion page and submitting their papers (ahem, Tuesday and Isabelle.) Don't worry, anonymous friends (TUESDAY AND ISABELLE!!!!!,) we still love you. <3
Then, to kick off the official academic schedule, Mrs. Wray read the beautiful poem "Opals" by Robin Becker. Following that, we were handed a worksheet designed to help us reflect on our Living History papers. During this time, Mrs. Wray gushed to us about how her new dog was "so cute!" But among her frenetic grading, commenting, teaching, and home life patterns, she's a bit too occupied for a pet at the moment, so her mom is taking care of the dog for the first 8 weeks.
After that, an enthralling announcement was made! The Oregon Writing Festival was open for submission! Even though we only had two days to write an application letter and choose a 2-page piece of our writing to submit, we were all jumping for joy! Or at least I was. C'mon guys, writing is fun! (And if you don't agree, just say yes because chances are, Mrs. Wray is reading this.) I mean, I totally didn't write my application letter in the thirty minutes before I left for school. Nope.
But that's neither here nor there. (Kudos to Mrs. Wolfe-Rocca for that saying! Oh, and by the way Mrs. Wray, Mrs. Wolfe says you're hot.) The guest speaker this year is going to be April Henry, the author of "Body in the Woods" and "Girl, Stolen". We briefly went over the location (PSU) and schedule of the festival. There's going to be workshops, lectures, sharing your work, and a lunch break! For those that submitted, keep your fingers crossed! And for those that didn't, I'd really recommend trying next year. It's a blast, and it's a great experience you'll remember forever.
Suddenly, the door opened to expose two students, come to talk to Mrs. Wray about chaperoning for prom. Apparently, Mrs. Wray couldn't provide a sufficient answer, as they left with an ominous threat of "We know where you are." Spooky. Then, we passed back some papers.
Personally, it was one of my favorite English days, due to what we did next: Sharing our Living History papers! Roughly half the class read aloud their favorite scene, and they were all magnificent. Despite our antics, we truly are a group of wonderful thinkers and writers. Hats off to us! And also hats off to our past English teachers and all the books we've read for cultivating our passion and skills. Yay!
I actually kept track of who read and the different subjects, but it's extremely vague and might not be too accurate. I was too distracted appreciating everyone's stories. :) Feel free to edit and add more information.
We shared up to the end of class, and yes, there was homework, but since Thursday's class is already over, I see no reason to list it. Unless we all find a machine that can transport us back to Wednesday night. But if that happened, I'm pretty sure that English homework would be the last of our concerns. (Not that English homework isn't important. It is. Really. Suuuuuuuper important. Heh.)
By the way, I wrote this on Friday, but I fell asleep and then my computer restarted. I was just about to fling myself off my front porch when this blessed, lovely little website had a popup that said "We've recovered an unsaved draft. Edit from this draft?" and I howled for joy and promised to adopt 279 stray iguanas when I grew older––
MWAHAHA! I AM BACK! YOU THOUGHT YOU GOT RID OF ME, BUT HERE I AM! IN THE FLESH! ALIVE! RETURNED FROM THE DEAD! AND NOW, SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR SLIMY AQUATIC COMPANIONS––
*Suddenly, a garbled rumbling sound echoes from the distant hills. Of the Salinas Valley. John Steinbeck rides in on a massive gray frog. 50 shades of gr––erm, frogs. Multitudes of smaller frogs follow, bellowing battle cries. They each carry toothpicks. They sweep in, surrounding Barfbag Buttsniffer, and he desperately tries to fight them off. But it's no use. He is no match for their amphibious powers. A random fire starts. A car drops from the sky. It's a Michael Bay film.*
CURSE YOU, DEVIL FROGS!
*When the smoke clears, all that's left is a bloody finger.*
Nah, I'm just kidding. It's a french fry with ketchup. Some of the frogs have McDonald's addictions. The end.
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4-3-15
Katherine Grisham
Good Afternoon! So today's… well yesterday's class was filled with fun (as usual) so if you missed it too bad for you.
Did you know April is National Poetry Month? It is, and Ms. Wray of offering extra credit. If you go to poetry.org and memorize a poem that has a minimum of 20 lines then present it to the class by the last week of April then you will get extra credit. And the answer is no, overachievers - if the poem is over 20 lines you don't get more extra credit. But even if you don't get more extra credit choir peoples, it would still be pretty cool if you sang "Little Tree" for the class (You can get a high five from me if that makes you feel better)
The poem for the day was "Risk" by Anais Nin.
Then the day came
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to blossom
After the poem of the day, Jinghui, Jenny, and Kamala shared their living history stories. All of them were excellent. I can't wait to read the rest of them. One of my favorite sentence fragments from Jinghui's story was "crescendo of doom." Jenny's metaphor of the board game weaved into her conclusion was amazing. Kamala's scenery description as quoted from someone in the class (can't remember who though, sorry!) "was something out of a movie."
Once all the stories were read, we moved into discussion about Macbeth Act II and III. (This section was supposed to come out in more of an outline form than bulleted… Alas! That didn't happen as you can see)
- Macbeth admitting to killing the guards out of love for Duncan is not a good cover
- Laying it on too thick
- Not lying low
- Perhaps trying to convince himself that he's not guilty
- Comparison to Romeo in the heat of the moment
- Shakespeare has theme of love
- Banquo's reaction - Is he suspicious of Macbeth?
- General consensus, yes suspicious
- Was there when witches made prophecy
- Lady Macbeth
- Faint after Macbeth's stirring speech of his love was intentional
- Is she more bad than Macbeth
- some say more dangerous
- some say more bad
- some ask what truly defined as bad
- Max (I think it was) had a good quote "I don't like brands of good and evil"
After discussion there were twenty minutes remaining in which we used that time to break up into groups and prepare for a presentation we are giving to the class next time we meet regarding Act III. We are supposed to create a powerpoint, act out a short part of the section you were assigned, explain the significance, pick out specifically 3 -5 quotes and explain the significance of that, and prepare one question for the class. Be sure to create your powerpoint on google docs and share it with Ms. Wray. Oh and there is a Vocab 14 Quiz next class, two lit terms were due at 3:00 today, and keep reading your independent reading novels. Date Alert! Projects are due April 17.
Unless I'm forgetting anything, that is all. Have a great weekend everyone!
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3/18/15
Lauren Gilbert
We began class with a poem: The World is Too Much With Us, Late and Soon by William Wordsworth. Mrs. Wray then proceeded to remind us to update our independent reading progress on GoodReads and that the only homework over break would be to finish our paper and read Act III of Macbeth.
Our first activity of the day was reconvening with our Macbeth scene partners in order to condense and modernize the interaction between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth in Act II Scene II. Both Jinghui and Drew and Isabelle and Sara entertained the class by performing their unique interpretations of the scene.
Some important points that were brought up in the class discussion after the skits were:
We then continued to work on analyzing Macbeth's language after he has committed the murder and we talked about the visual that is created by the language. His lines essentially imply that if he places his hand in water, everything will turn red because of the horrible deed he has done. He states this in two different ways: through long, multi-syllable language, and short, staccato words. People commented that this could show two sides of Macbeth's personality. Many also thought that it emphasized the gravity of what he did; flowery and simply language both had the same effect in this instance. Lastly, we discussed how the language showed a sense of resolution and harsh acceptance.
We concluded class by watching the Patrick Stewart version of Macbeth through the end of Act II. Some important points that were made in our discussion about the clip were:
3/16/15Morgan Lloyd's Scribe Four: Fifty Shades of Scribe
We bounded into Honors English, chipper as ever, and sat down in our seats, now arranged in a semicircular pattern. Class opened with a poem, "To Helen About Her Hair", written by one Robinson Jeffers about some random woman's hair. Some found it charming, but I couldn't help but find the whole concept rather creepy. Perhaps it's time I stop considering myself a romantic...
We then moved to the five hour discussion over our living history papers we have every class. Mrs. Wray kindly informed us that we could turn our papers in on Wednesday, if we were so inclined, but it will be due properly after the break. It will not be extra credit, however, so there goes my motivation. She mentioned that this batch of stories was to enthralling for a simple glance, and that she was ending up reading the whole thing. Thanks for making her push back the deadline, guys! Also, if you want, you can turn it in any time over Spring Break vis a vis Google Drive. There was also hints that fun things would happen on Wednesday, perhaps involving costumes and baked goods, so pick another day to skip.
Next, Mrs. Wray regaled us with a story about an Australian professor who had contacted her, asking to talk to a previous student, as his/her Living History story had been so incredible the guy thought he/she was actually there. Needless to say, the man was rather crushed when he found out he'd stumbled upon a fifteen-year-old's English assignment. Better luck next time, I suppose.
After that we had a vocab quiz, which started and ended with little incident. After handing those in we started talking about independent reading projects. Turns out that Mrs. Wray was a little optimistic about the number of people keeping up on the assignment, and so the due date was shifted to April 17. Get working, people!
Once all that was done, halfway into the period, we started talking about tragedy. Mainly, the Aristotelian (love that word) and Shakespeare's definitions. The Aristotelian
revolved around the "arousal of pity and fear", and from there the catharsis of those emotions. Fate was was screwed the heroes over, not their own actions. Shakespeare, meanwhile, thought that fate should play a lesser part, compared to the actions of the hero. The tragic hero has a lot of admirable characteristics, but one tragic flaw that leads to his downfall; ironically, this tragic flaw is usually what led to his praise. We discussed whether Macbeth's tragic flaw was impressionability or ambition. Form there, we talked about the tragic vision and tragic plot. The hero is always engaged in a losing battle with life; after the peripeteia, or reversal of fortune, it all goes downhill for him. However, the conclusion of the tragedy serves to restore moral order.
Talking about the dagger soliloquy and Act 2 Scene 1 was next on the agenda. We conversed in small groups about the contrast between Macbeth and Banquo, how the former was more calculating and in power, while the latter was more open and deferential. The end of the soliloquy reminded me of the incredible song "Heaven and Hell", and I had to start singing it, which caused Quincy to remark that Mrs. Wray seemed to have more patience with our shenanigans than usual. I, myself, have no opinion on the subject; I'm to busy listening to the song.
Actually, the song kind of fits.
We discussed how we would stage the soliloquy if we were directing Macbeth, and whether we would show the dagger or not. There were some fantastic ideas, but I feel the 2006 movie did it best; having the dagger be a shadow from a palm tree seems much more to the spirit if what Shakespeare really intended. After that, we read the soliloquy, then went into the hall for a little while and talked about what it would say in modern language. Time ran out before we could finish, and Mrs. Wray assigned us our homework; to finish Act Two and do our Vocab 14 sentences. Now, for the enjoyment of all, the cheesy Australian Macbeth in all its glory!
Tromeo and Juliet was more respectful than this (actually, maybe not)
Anika Todt
Today is Ms. Wray's birthday, so class started up with a (surprisingly upbeat) funeral dirge (the happy birthday song). This was followed by the rearrangement of the lonesome two-person table group in the back, which took longer than usual because Ms. Wray was striving for "gender equality" in her rearrangements. The topic of discussion then quickly veered off into a different direction as the class began to discuss Mt. Whistler. As the discussion dwindled, our class was presented with a poem by E.E. Cummings, titled Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond".
We were then handed the notorious Honors English Applications and told the test day will be April 15th. This announcement was followed by several students expressing anxieties about the "dreaded Junior AP English". Luckily though, Ms. Wray offered to have several students come in and talk to us about what it's like taking the class, and she assured us that Ms. Aalberg is not a harsh grader. When Ms. Wray finally got around to handing out the applications, she was thrilled to discover that every single person in the class grabbed a form.
Discussion then turned to last nights homework, which was to register for noredink.com. Ms. Wray then assured us that the website wasn't going to sell our personal information to the black market. Several students then, to their astonishment, found out that the website was pronounced "no red ink", not "no redink", and Morgan pointed out that the website did in fact use red ink (oh the scandal). As far as grading our assignments on the website, it was determined that they would be graded based on completion, much to everyone's relief.
Addressing the drafts we turned in last class, Ms. Wray admitted she hadn't had a chance to read them yet since her time was dedicated to junior conferences at the moment. She then promised that she will be able to read through and comment on all our papers by tomorrow afternoon. She also requested that we upload our drafts to Google drive and share it with her to make the process more efficient. Though we won't be getting our feedback until tomorrow, keep in mind that the final version will still be due on Wednesday.
Our discussion was then directed toward the article we read last night on the Great Chain of Being. Several good points came up, including the fact that if Macbeth chooses to kill King Duncan, he will be disrupting the Great Chain of Being. In addition, any disruption in the chain was thought to have a ripple effect and affect everything else in the universe. Due to the nature of the Great Chain of Being, the individual is viewed as simply another "brick in the wall".
We then moved on to discussing the four humours (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm) that were thought to make up the human body at the time. Ms. Wray pulled up a chart that showed which humours were associated with each season/element/organ/temperature/disposition/traits. Meg and Nora both pointed out that the belief in humours implies that a person has very little free will since the balance of their humours (which is essentially genetic) already determines their natural disposition.
Our attention shifted back to the image in the Great Chain of Being packet and Ms. Wray told us that demons were often ranked higher than humankind on the chain despite their evil nature. Since the chain is based on spirit vs. matter and not good vs. evil, this ranking did appear to make sense.
Next, we discussed which Macbeth soliloquy we preferred. Most of the class preferred the second version of the soliloquy because they argued that his aggression was more captivating, conveyed his troubled nature, and appeared more personal. Others argued the opposite, claiming that his aggressive attitude actually detracted from his performance.
We then discussed Macbeth's use of euphemisms in the scene and the implications of such language. This was followed by Quincy noting that even if Macbeth killed Duncan, he still wouldn't be crowned king since Duncan's son is the heir to the throne as the Prince of Cumberland. It was then noted that the Prince of Cumberland would be the first to draw suspicion since it would appear that Macbeth would have no reason to kill Duncan. Our response to this all is Tome #27.
This discussion was then followed by Ms. Wray requesting several volunteers to act out the second half of Act 1 Scene 7 in which Lady Macbeth convinces Macbeth to go along with her plan. During their performances, the class discussed why Macbeth and Lady Macbeth don't have any children. After a bit of struggle conveying the belittling/disgusted manner of Lady Macbeth, the actors improved considerably and earned themselves a solid A+. This, of course, was followed by an accidental innuendo followed by a lengthy giggle fit in the classroom.
Tome #28 was to record what we thought was Lady Macbeth's most persuasive line in the scene. Our homework is to finish reading Act 2 Scene 1.
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3-6-15
Sarah Kwartler
“Got up and dressed up
and went out & got laid
Then died and got buried
in a coffin in the grave.”
No, my friends, that is not an excerpt from the classic teen song about going crazy because you are young. No, that was an excerpt from our poem of the day, “Mexico City Blues [113th Chorus]” by Jack Kerouac. That excerpt was brought to you by “Gap” because “Kerouac wore khakis.” However, this is not an advertisement for “Gap” clothing since Hemingway also wore khakis, and we all know what a lively and entertaining writer he was. This poem was also brought to you by Ms. Wray’s twitter feed, proving that my parents are now less “hip” than my teachers.
“You should pick up a Yearbook application!”
That message was brought to you by Ms. Wray (not “Gap” or three witches). Also, two copies of your historical narrative rough draft are due Tuesday. One lit term is due next week too. If you are feeling like it is hopeless, remember that “It’s always darkest before it is completely black”-Chairman Mao. I guess that means we should pull an all-nighter.
We also discussed Tome #25 (The one with the Macbeth excerpts) today. Ms. Wray continued to be “hip” and divided us into debrief groups in a creative way by having us go to corners that were named after something we preferred. (Meanwhile, Ms. Wray is still having a dog naming crisis, so please let her know if you prefer the name "Suki" or "Harper").
Round 1 (3C): The Food Groups (No, we didn’t draw the food pyramid)
Steak and Potatoes: The beards that Banquo mentions are a reference to the cliché “To beard a lion in its den,” so Banquo is scared to “interpret” since he is in unfamiliar territory.
Fried Chicken: Banquo’s confusion towards the witches’ physical appearance relates to his confusion about the prophecy.
Pizza: Banquo is questioning the possibility of witches, as they seem otherworldly.
Sushi: The beard is a line of reality.
Round 2 (4C): The Music Groups
Classic Rock: The witches are being sarcastic and disrespectful by ignoring Macbeth’s question.
Alternate College: The third witch predicts the future. The three witches represent the past, present, and future.
Hip Hop: The witches are malicious and are invoking “hail” in its form that means to fall.
Jazz and Classical: Ditto.
Round 3 (5B): The Vacation Groups
Backpacking in Thailand: Those at the top have more to lose when they fall.
Shopping and Museums in Paris: The witches are predicting the past present and future.
Washington D.C.: The pattern is less to greater, less to greater, greater to less. The third witch seems to care more about power.
South America Ruins: The witches seem to respect Banquo more than they respect Macbeth.
Today, we learned about soliloquies, asides, and monologues.
Soliloquy: A lengthy speech in which a single character- usually is alone on stage- expresses his or her opinion to the audience.
Soliloquy Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3dKM37s4PM (And yes, I used that for a lit term).
Aside: A brief remark to the audience while other characters are onstage.
Monologue: A long speech to the people onstage.
We also did an exercise on Macbeth’s thought process (Line 140, Scene 3) by holding hands with a partner and swaying back and forth. Jenny and Tuesday won the competition and will be advancing to the State Swaying Competition this weekend. Good luck to them! As for the rest of us, we got a C- and will be having a grade caused mental break down this weekend. In addition to finishing our second rough drafts and a lit term, we have to finish Act 1 of Macbeth.
3/4/15
Katy Howells
Ms. Wray began class by congratulating Sarah on her Silver Key award! Good job Sarah. We then spent the 1st 5 minutes (10 minutes) discussing and reviewing our rough drafts with our partners. It's also important to note that Ms. Wray's powerpoint font was not liked by the class, and was called "childish"; Ms. Wray liked how it contrasted with her more appropriate font. We then talked about our scenes. Meg introduced a cruise ship for the witches scene, and something about "vodka moms (?)".
We then learned a couple Macbeth facts. It was written in 1606 during King James' rule. King James had something against witches, and witches are prominent in Macbeth, a connection maybe?
After that, we began reading the book today and dividing into roles. The Witches are very popular roles and there is now a line up to get them. Ms. Wray had Cami and Kaity act out part of Act 1 Scene 2, and it ended up with Kaity stabbing Cami. (Not real, of course). The 3 witches then danced in a circle, chanting, holding hands, and being sinister. (Kinda).
We spent the rest of class reading. The witches have beards.
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3/2/15
Emi Ampo
In the beginning of class, Ms. Wray showed the class the framed certificate of appreciation and letter she received from the Smile train organization. She walked around the room, allowing us to see both the certificate and the letter with the photos of the children we helped get treated with our donations.
Then, we exchanged our first rough drafts of the Living History project with a partner and discussed our main concerns about our papers. Each partner wrote bullet points on concerns he or she had about the paper as well.
Next, we finished up our Macbeth quote activity, where we gathered around in a circle in order according to the number of our quote. We then went in order and stated our quote as clearly as possible the first time around, in a whisper the second time around, and a shout the third time around. Ms. Wray then had us go back to our seats as showed us a wordle composed of words from Macbeth. Some of the most prominent words in the Macbeth wordle included; hath, thou, and Macbeth.
Ms. Wray then introduced us to our 23rd tome addressing our thoughts on what we inferred would happen regarding character, conflict, etc. based on the three different Macbeth activities. If you don't remember them, the included the acting out of one mystery scene, the reading aloud of various quotes from the book, and the observation of the Macbeth wordle. Some students believed that there was a large possibility for some form of conspiracy and death to occur during Macbeth.
After discussing the 23rd tome, we watched three short clips of three different versions of Macbeth movies. The first movie clip was the beginning of a version by Polanski in 1971, which featured three old, haggard witches mumbling their lines while burying a knife, severed arm, and a noose on a desolate beach. One of the old witches had a missing eye and seemed to give of an aura of authority over the other two witches. The second clip was from the beginning of a version by Wright in 2006. In this version, the three witches were far younger. They were more like seemingly frenzied school girls with pale skin while committing acts of vandalism in a cemetery. The third clip was by Goold in 2010 and was the most recently produced of the three movies. This one had three older women who wore nurses uniforms and one of the witches tore out a patient's heart after watching him die. This third clip gave off a more sinister and horror-movie like feeling.
After watching and discussing our thoughts about all three clips, we wrote notes, opinions, and observations about all three in a table under the 23rd tome response. Finally, Ms. Wray concluded class with a quick summary and description of the setting of the beginning of act one, scene one of Macbeth.
The homework for next class is to edit your partner's Living History first draft and to complete the 24th tome. The 24th tome is a tome where we fill out a table and write down stage directions as though we were directing act one scene one of Macbeth. Two literary terms are also due by the end of this week.
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2/24/15
Kaity Olsen
At the start of class Ms. Wray reminded us that we need to come up with some suggestions for a Goodread's group name because so far she has received only one suggestion from an "anonymous" source, email her if you have any ideas. She also is looking for potential dog names! We read the poem "Nature" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow then split up into groups of 3-4 people to edit scene 2. Remember that the rough draft is due Monday! We then discussed the "Psychology of Evil", a TED talk by Philip Zimbardo, and the subject of our Tome 22. Some interesting points included the difference between being evil and an evil act, the subjective notion of morality, and the way to tell a person's true nature being revealed through their treatments of their inferiors. Next class is Vocab Quiz 12!
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2/20/15
Kamala Woods
We began class with a short discussion concerning school hours and week days. We brainstormed preferable alternatives to the way school is currently organized, conferring whether we'd like to have longer school hours and a three day weekend, month long breaks distributed throughout the year, or longer school years and more days off. After this short conversation, Ms. Wray read to us "Mind" by Richard Wilbur (http://imagination.pressible.org/cndmnt/go-bat-team).
Shortly after, and I am not sure how, the class became aware of Ms. Wray's cousin, who was not only a model and a doctor, but who also dumped Matt Damon for the leading drummer in Metallica. Mind Blown.
While we were still processing this piece of information, Ms. Wray left to make copies of our scenes, challenging us to engage in some form of a literary activity. The Sophomore Honors English students quickly took advantage of this opportunity, playing games of hang-man and singing along to "Staying Alive".....I don't think that counted as a literary activity.....
Once Ms. Wray returned to the class with our copies in her hand, we organized ourselves into groups and prepared to edit our scenes. Much to our dismay, we had to read them out loud to the group, which was, for me anyways, very helpful. Everyone's stories and ideas in my group seemed interesting and was so engaging, which only made me want to read them all the more. Hopefully everyone is as excited as I am for this project! We were given talking points to touch upon during our scene discussion and Ms. Wray taught us methods to unfold our stories in an original and luring way, rather than the over-done 'flashback'.
Somewhere through this lecture and the group scene discussion, we were met by a.........BEEEEP. BEEEEP. BEEEEP......Alas, it was a fire drill! Alarmed and disheveled, the class moved its way outside, only to come back in five minutes later.
With the last three minutes of class, we rushed through tonight's homework, which was: second Living History Project scene (bring 3 copies for group discussions), watch a Ted-Talk and answer the questions provided, and lastly, have a great weekend!
Oh yes, and to bring our independent reading novels for next class!!!!
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2/18/15
Nic Quattromani
We started off class today with a vocabulary quiz on List #12; this was fairly quick and easy, as far as quizzes go, because it is still early in the semester and as such we did not have any cumulative vocabulary to review. After everyone had handed their quizzes in, Mrs. Wray presented a short slideshow regarding the proper placement of various forms of punctuation in relation to direct quotations. We were reminded to place hyphens, colons, and semicolons outside of quotes, while quotation and exclamation marks were to be placed inside the quote only when they were part of it, and commas and periods always went inside the quotation marks unless they were placed before the section of quoted text. Additionally, we were informed that the first scene for our historical fiction pieces will be due next class period, and we had a brief discussion about how to adequately craft a scene in a fictional narrative. We headed across the hall to the computer lab once that was finished. Today's target for the research project was 40 notecards and six sources, which was the final total for the assignment. While we were working on these, Mrs. Wray spoke with us individually about our story planning sheets and provided some helpful advice regarding the overall structure of our historical fiction pieces, and at the end of the third period we returned to the classroom to receive Vocabulary List #12.
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2/13/15
Tuesday Lewman
Shortly after entering class, we handed in our lit terms with a unanimous sigh of relief and got on with our day. For our poem, Jessica read us "The River's Tail". Quickly we discussed some details of our class Goodreads group, which you should all make sure to sign up for if you haven't already! We also tried to look for a way to kick "Zoe" out of our group, but never came to a final decision. Our conversation took a turn and Mark and Morgan shared about their experience at the All the Light We Cannot See book talk, which it seems went well. Before transitioning to the social studies lab to work on our 30 notecards and 5 sources due by the end of class, we discussed our "Develop Your Narrator" sheets (which were completed as homework the night before) in small table groups. Mrs. Wray passed out the "Story Planning Sheet" to complete as part of our homework, which led to a conversation about planning our stories, naturally. Her advice to us was to use and finish the planning sheet, but remember to let your creative process do its thing as well. Mrs. Wray also showed us some helpful links she put up on here to helpful tips on narrative writing. We were advised not to condense time, tell our stories from a distance, and that nobody is compelled by summary. A point I thought was most interesting was to think of how your favorite movies play out, and be inspired by them. After a lengthy discussion on the direction of our papers, we finally went to the lab to research. Overall, Friday the 13th wasn't too bad. I hope everyone is having a great weekend! Remember to start reading your independent novel if you haven't already and sign up for Goodreads!
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Isabelle Cullen
2/9/15
Hello class! We began Monday's class with the usual passing back of Lit Terms and we turned in List 11 vocabulary sentences. Mrs. Wray discussed the radio program called The Moth, which is an hour long broadcast where people tell their real stories. Students in the state of Oregon are trying to start a high school version of the Moth and decided to call it the Cocoon. If you would like to participate, ask Mrs. Wray for details. The floor was then opened to questions about sourcing like websites vs multiple articles, can we have more than six sources, and others. Another question was if you have contradicting information,what do you do? You state it in the Attribution of Research. There was also a question about print sources and Mrs. Wray's answer was a print source can be a newspaper article, for example, that was originally printed out and you found it online. There were many other questions that my pencil did not catch the answer to. After a long talk about sources, Mrs. Wray read the poem "Siren Song" by Margaret Atwood. We then passed out the outline for our Independent Reading Projects and discussed it. You must read a fictional book and make a product for it like a movie, a poem, or something else and give a description of how it ties into the book. A flurry of hands shot up when Mrs. Wray asked for book title suggestions. Some of the books that were suggested were Life of Pi, Dune, The Colonization Series, A Fine Balance, Count of Monte Cristo, and Jelico Road. Mrs. Wray also brought up an issue with lit. terms regarding the numbering , which is continuing through semester 1(21,22,23...), and copying lit terms off the internet. Don't do it because you'll have to redo it. The class was moved into the lab to work for the rest of the class on their living histories project.
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2/6/2015
Drew Vogelsang
We started of class by making a making the decision to skip the last vocabulary tests of the unit and move on in order to catch up with the schedule. This means that there will be a completely fresh start on Quiz 11 regarding the 100% Club. After taking Vocab Quiz 8, we began discussing a timeline for the Living History Project. Mrs. Wray reminded us that the amount of information on the notecard should be manageable and small pieces of a document instead of the entire thing. The amount of notecards we need for the project has gone up to 40, all of them linked to a source and completely filled in. The required print sources can be anything that wasn't on the internet first. This guideline includes online documents and news articles. For the rest of class we went to the lab and worked on gathering information for our projects.
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2/4/2015
Jenny Kwon
Welcome Back Ms. Wray! We started off class by putting our phones in our phone cubbies and with a live performance of Mark reading the daily poem. Than we proceeded to ask Mrs. Wray more detailed questions about our Living History Projects. Remember, if you are a topic that is doubled up with another student, it would be a good idea to check what they are doing to ensure that we don't have too similar of stories! During our discussion about the project, Mrs. Wray reminded us about the 35 facts we should include in our paper (they can be about the weather, street name, etc.). Also, we were given a packet with advice to writing historical fiction. Please address this tool when in times of trouble, confusion, and (hopefully not) tears.
After learning more about our project and reviewing the packet we were given, we moved to the computer lab for about fifty forty-five minutes. At the lab we were given the opportunity to start our notecards and research! Yay! There, Mrs. Wray individually had short discussions or "check-ins" with us about our individual topics.
Our homework was to study for the vocab quiz #8, have 2 lit terms (yay! no more procrastination!), and have at least 1 source card (basically a bibliography) and 7 notecards. Don't forget to use noodletools! It's very helpful even if we love google docs :)
Sorry for the late post but I hope everyone has a wonderful night!
P.S. If gale or any other library source does not let you log in, both the username and password is: lakeoswego
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Extra Little Note
Isabelle Cullen
2-1-15
To those who attended the book discussion, here is the link to the video of the autistic girl I mentioned.
Video from Book Chat
Hope you guys enjoy this video as much as I did.
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1/30/15
Rhys Richmond
The class period started off with us discovering that we had a substitute teacher instead of Mrs. Wray. Ms. Rathbow, who many of the class knew from 9th Grade Honors English, stepped in to collect our Vocabulary Sentences (list #8) and our Living History preliminary worksheet. Upon calling roll, she stumbled over a few names (not unexpected), but we were understanding. We were asked to star our most-wanted topic out of three so Mrs. Wray knew which one was our priority upon assigning this weekend. Mrs. Wray will post our official topics sometime over the weekend on the wiki.
Next, Mrs. Rathbow overviewed our homework. We are to 1. Study for Vocab Quiz #8 next Thursday and 2. Complete the white Discovery Research Sheet upon receiving our official topics this weekend.
The rest of the class was devoted to Ms. Doyle's presentation on research and citing for our upcoming Living History Project. Ms. Doyle walked us through what we should be looking for in our research (1. Understanding the event "what happened" and 2. Historical Details "what it felt like"). From that point, we learned how to find a book in the LOHS Library catalog (make sure to note the call number and title) and access certain eBooks available on the Library website. After Print sources, we spoke about several Library-sponsored resources for research. The main three are:
- Gale PowerSearch (a good source for information on everyday life) (HINT: If you're looking for a specific decade in history, you can utilize LOJ's Gale PowerSearch to find categories on the 80s, 90s etc.)
- ABC-Clio (good for an overview of a historical event) (HINT: make sure to use 5 or less words in your search)
- jSTOR (very scholarly, not good for an overview of an event, but extremely useful for science experiments/journals etc)
For all three, the at-home username and password are lakeoswego and lakeoswego (easy, right?).
The culmination of the presentation was about Citing Sources and Noodle Tools. We all accessed or set up our Noodle Tools accounts and created new projects to add to Mrs. Wray's dropbox account. Ms. Doyle walked us through citing both print and online sources, and directed us to try making our own citation. We repeated the steps with making a notecard, and finally we had the last 15 minutes to ourselves to work on notecards.
Good luck with starting your Living History projects everyone!
1/14/15
Jessica Seropian
Question: Why do we use @s as entry markers? Huh. Anyway, on to the scribe notes!
We started class off today with vocab test #7. Unfortunately, since we were short on time, we didn't get to listen to the blessed Stayin' Alive by the, again, blessed Bee Gees. Either way, we did get to listen to some music during the quiz considering that the class next door was playing a ridiculously loud song (you would think that they would learn some manners!).
After the vocab test Ms. Wray handed out two sheets of paper. On one of the handouts was Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and on the other, there was a poem. The poem, "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough," was the inspiration for the title for Of Mice and Men. The inspiration was found in the penultimate stanza, third line from the top.
From there we had about 10 minutes to fill out one of the "What's Important?" sheets. This response will be Tome #21.
After that, we went straight into discussion. Today's discussion was different, though, as Ms. Wray explained. We each got two pennies at the beginning of the activity. When we wanted to talk, we had to throw a penny into the middle of our circle. This way, by the end of the period, we would have all put our own two cents in (very clever Ms. Wray!).
Some of today's discussion points:
As for homework, finish up any Lit Terms, organize your tome, and prepare for the dreaded final. Dun dun dun!!!!
Happy hump day!
New Geico "Hump Day" commercial ^^^^
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1/12/15
Mark Yazhari
Ms. Wray began the class by reminding us of the upcoming class discussion after finals on All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr. Most of the class is planning on finishing the book and attending the class discussion, but it looks like Jinghui has formed a cult of anti-extra-credit followers. Jinghui, I never would've expected such treachery from you...
Next, Ms. Wray told the class that she will "hopefully" have our Personal Odyssey projects graded and back to us before finals. Looks like hope is all we have, now... She told us that, admittedly, grading English papers and projects usually takes much longer than the grading of most of our other classes; fortunately, we caught the hint that she was insulting the other education departments, and I for one will never forgive my other teachers for their sloth and laziness. Thanks, Ms. Wray!
Back to All The Light We Cannot See; looks like we need to get our tickets to hear Anthony Doerr on Saturday, January 17th at 11am at the Lake Oswego Library – bring your library card and get there early, and there will be a maximum of two tickets per person. Doerr will be speaking on February 11th at 7:00 pm at the LOHS auditorium, and there will be a complimentary community dessert buffet hosted by the Lake Oswego Women's Club at 6pm at LOHS (ooh la la!). The lecture and dessert buffet are free at LOHS, but you need to get a ticket from the library for admittance.
At this point, the announcements were done and Ms. Wray (tragically) collected our revised Kite Runner essays. Mine, of course, was already tear-stained and dripping when she seized it from my grubby mitts.
We proceeded to take our Of Mice and Men passage analysis quiz, in which we had to choose an extensive passage about a character from the novella and explain how Steinbeck uses details and imagery to paint a picture of the character. After the quiz, we moved into groups to discuss the different characters we had chosen – my group focused on George/Lennie, who are often described at the same time in contrast to each other.
Our group discussions morphed into one big class discussion, a few points of which I will comment on:
All in all, we had a discussion-based and productive class. Our homework is to finish Of Mice and Men, study for vocabulary quiz #7, update our tomes (by finals), and start studying for the final using Ms. Wray's study guide. Keep up with all your work, everyone, and make sure to prepare in advance for finals!
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1-8-15
Meg Smith
First Scribe of the Year! Yay! Insert snazzy title here.
The class started off with a frustrated and amused meandering in, as none of us had thought to check the door to see if it was locked or not. Hey, there wasn't anything on the entrance exam about common sense.
We were then quickly marched down to the Math hall computer lab, where we were asked to log on and print our essays. This struck fear in the hearts of many, but we were able to work through it. As many people buried their faces in their hands about spelling errors (thank you, iPads) some of our bravest students undertook the task of rearranging the mismatched essays.
When we got back to the classroom, we chatted for a while and didn't seem to wonder what was taking Ms. Wray so long. The questions we didn't ask were answered when she brought in, to the delight of many, donuts! We were overjoyed, and then were worried that these donuts were to soften the blow of bad news. (I drew a parallel here between this, and the sugar cubes given to the sacrificial sheep in TKR.) She reassured us that because we were so freaked out after last class, she felt awful and wanted to comfort us with baked goodies. (I drew a parallel here between this and "There is a way to be good again.") She then said, in a moment which will be forever etched upon our brains, "Curse those damn iPads!"
As a result of our poor essay writing under pressure, we will be given a chance for redemption. We did a peer edit on our papers, and Ms. Wray will comment on them via Google Docs by Saturday morning. We are expected to bring a typed, printed, and revised version of our essay to class by Monday.
Then, as we sighed with relief through mouthfuls of sugary, delicious pastry, Ms. Wray and a few volunteers passed back lit terms and vocab sentences.
We then proceeded to walk down to the library to pick up Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men. We noted its smallness, wondered if it would be more like the dreaded The Pearl or the beloved East of Eden, debated on whether the small furry and cotton-tailed animal on the cover was a frog or a rabbit. Judging by its long ears, long body, and fluffy tail, combined with context clues from the first few chapters, it's a rabbit.
To preface our preliminary discussion about Of Mice and Men, we examined the famous Depression-era photograph "Migrant Mother".
We read the photographer's statement and made some observations about her weathered yet onwards-looking expression, the children physically leaning on her, and how the photographer's statement complemented this. We wrote a bit, and this became a tome.
To add to the tome, we did a character walkaround to introduce the characters of Of Mice and Men. Some of us were blessed to witness Serena's portrayal of Lennie. She can play Queen Bey, she can play Lennie, just give the girl an Oscar already.
Then, much to many students' groans about Out of the Dust (curse that book. You can't just make poetry by hitting the enter key a bunch of times!) we saw a few images from the Dust Bowl and talked about the agricultural crisis which made up a large portion of the Great Depression.
As time ran out of class and we began to pack up, Ms Wray instructed us to read Chapters 1-3 of OMM, and think about Mice, Men, and what those things mean.
For amusement purposes, I have included two of my favorite songs. The first, be sure you aren't eating or drinking anything while you watch/listen to it. Heed my warning. The second I chose because it's a lovely song and I just really like it.
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12-17-14
Quincy Hyun
As the class started, we found ourselves scrambling to find our seats yet again. This time we were to be organized back into our envelope thread groups.
After successfully navigating back to our envelope buddies, Mrs. Wray got straight to the point.
a.) The first thing was that we would unfortunately NOT be getting our Odyssey tests back today as Mrs. Wray still had a few papers left to grade. However, we were pleasantly informed of Turnitin.com's review and comment feature which let Mrs. Wray grade our papers online and set voice audio recording that we could listen to personally at a later time (not so bad). However, she did mention a few key things our class could work on in the future in order to improve our essays. It goes as follows:
- It is crucial that our sub points are based off of concepts and ideas instead of events. While listing examples in Chronological order may seem obviously supportive to us, a key part of having strong body paragraphs is having a notion of what we are trying to say.
- Everyone in the class could especially work on analysis passages with increased depth and precision (i.e.The languge, the devices used, etc.). Picking apart quotes really helps show our understanding of the story and also fits much better with our claims (WHICH MUST BE ARGUMENTS, NOT FACTS)
And to everyone who used the Cyclops Quote, Shame on you. (just kidding)
b.) The second thing?We bombed the quiz... (well not BOMBED, but it could have been a whole lot better. Like, even a hedgehog in a tutu wasn't enough to soften the blow) The whole class got the whole "It's not that many points in the grand scheme of things" lecture that we've all heard from teachers plenty of times but by the time Mrs. Wray finished, we all seemed to feel a little bit better about our grades. Maybe it was that we weren't alone in the fail club.
Thankfully, Mrs. Wray gave us a short power point presentation on what we could do to help retain the information that we read in the future:
- Have a composition notebook or something easy to write in at all times. This way, jotting something down as soon as you hear/read/think of it is easy and can provide good questions and comments later.
- Sticky note your text!!
- Review your composition notebook before class to get everything you read earlier fresh in your mind.
After our quizzes and lit terms were passed back around, we began working on our big project for the day; a mini draft using our envelope thread as a thesis. The first step was organizing all our notecards and spreading them out. Then we were supposed to create a strong thesis and find sub points that backed it up using our notecards as the concrete details. Honestly, every writing piece we do still seems like a huge CD/CM paragraph. While we were working Mrs. Wray informed us of the horrible news that occurred in Pakistan only yesterday. The Taliban destroyed a school in Peshawar killing more than 130 children and injuring hundreds more. We send of grievances out to those in Pakistan. The Kite Runner is incredibly relevant even in today's society as exhibited here. This put a hsh amongst the class. However, nothing could keep us down forever!
We continued to work on our mini essays up until the bell rung. We didn't get to finished as much as we all hoped when we started, but overall each of these looked pretty nice. By the way, if anyone has a better picture of the projects feel free to submit them. Also, if anyone wants their own copy text me at: 503-539-0084. Sorry for the late post guys!
*ALERT* THERE IS NO IN CLASS ESSAY ON FRIDAY. IT WILL BE THE TUESDAY AFTER WINTER BREAK. HOWEVER, THERE WILL STILL BE A FINAL DISCUSSION ABOUT THE KITE RUNNER ON FRIDAY. MAKE SURE TO BRING NOTES AND YOUR BOOK. Good luck!
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12-15-14
Katherine Grisham
Today started with yet another rearrangement of the classroom to keep us on our toes. All desks were in a semi circle facing the projector (soon to be revealed why).
After everybody found the chair to their liking, we discussed our blackout poems in groups then settled back down for a general class discussion about what it was like doing them overall. The majority of the class thought it was amazing how despite the randomness of the page, you could still connect it to the Kite Runner. There were some who disagreed though. After discussion, we had multiple poems of the day. Jessica, Kamala, Katy, Nora, Serena, and Mark were all willing to share their beautiful blackout poems with the class. (To read this rest, they are hanging on the back wall courtesy of Sydney)
POP QUIZ! Yes, a pop quiz. It actually happened… and no the speaker was not Amir.
Following the quiz, there was another brief discussion regarding the two main current events of the book. The big secret has been revealed (Hassan and Amir are half brothers),and Assef has returned. the two questions that arise from this are - Is Assef's return forced? Does the author enjoy tying up lose ends? Think about it. We will be elaborating more on the latter question next class.
Not only did we have a pop quiz, but also a surprise video about the dancing boys of Afghanistan (hence the desk arrangement). A journalist goes undercover to investigate. We will finish the video next class.
As for homework, finish Kite Runner.
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12-11-14
Morgan’s Scribe III: The Scribeocalypse (Yes, I’m actually supposed to be scribing)
A calamity struck our Honors English class this fine Thursday morning: no scribe was assigned. Therefore, it has fallen to me to ghost-scribe the day and complete the Morgan’s Scribe trilogy. If you remember anything we do, please feel free to add it.
We walked in to yet another weird seating change: now, the chairs were arranged into pods of four. It was time to convene with our envelope groups and dissect the Kite Runner. But first, we had vocab quiz number 6. I did mine in pen, because that’s how confident I was. There was yet another sentence about someone defrauding the elderly, and I may have ruined our baked goods chances when I forgot the date. It was, overall, like every single other vocab quiz.
After stapling those together with Mrs. Wray’s stapler of dubious origin, we handed them in. Sometime around now, the news was broken that we now have collected around 430 dollars for Smile Train. I can’t imagine it will take another period to reach our $500 goal, something I myself am very excited for. To inspire you to keep giving money, I have this video.
But in all seriousness, there are children with far bigger things to worry about than "the rent is too damn high", and we'll be helping some of them out. So good job, everyone.
Now, it was time to discuss our envelope threads. After synthesizing our quotes together and coming up with some ideas, we broke into jigsaw groups. We had five minutes to discuss before moving onto the next topic. It was like speed dating, but we were talking about the Kite Runner. (something I plan to do on every date from now on).
Finally, it was announced that we would have to read the next apparently spoileriffic section of the Kite Runner and compose a blackout poem with the text we were given. The poem must relate to the Kite Runner, so you can’t just scribble randomly with a Sharpie and see what comes up. In case you're still confused, refer to the helpful guide below.
12-9-14
Morgan's Scribe 2: Electric Boogaloo
As the bell once again rang, the Sophomore Honors English class shuffled through the doors of Mrs. Wray’s class and sat down, suspiciously devoid of energy. Either everyone was coincidentally tired, or something darker was afoot. And I don’t believe in coincidences…
Mrs. Wray waxed eloquent about the benefits of coffee for waking one up, mind, body, and soul. In response, I figured I’d post this.
DON'T BE LIKE TOO MUCH COFFEE MAN
We started off class with a famous poem, “How do I love thee,” or Sonnet 43, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The link’s here. http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/how-do-i-love-thee-sonnet-43
Mrs. Wray then reminded us that Reflections, the literary and art magazine, needs submissions and that they are due by the twelfth. So, get ‘em done. She then told us to submit narratives, vocab stories, and whatever else we have lying around. As inspiration, she read us the first part of Serena’s spectacular story that she wrote for a vocab assignment. Cruelly, Mrs. Wray cut it short, so that we never did find out the ending, but perhaps it could be posted here so we can read it in its entirety?
Here is Serena's piece of art! !
We then heard two pieces of good news. The first is that we have raised $300 dollars for the Smile Train in what I believe has been five days. That is an incredible feat, and it doesn’t appear the money is drying up. I, for one, am confident we will shatter our goal of $500. The second piece of good news is that the lost lit terms were recovered! I assume that they were be found in an old South American temple, hidden in the middle of the jungle and guarded by all manner of booby traps.
It was like this, guys
As there was some confusion about how exactly we write a lit term, Mrs. Wray kindly instructed us on everything we were doing wrong. That we need to focus more on the quotes we choose and not make general statements seemed to be the biggest thing we need to work on. To our delight, it appears we can now turn in multiple revisions at once. Unfortunately for my plans of unloading twenty revisions the last week of school, Mrs. Wray asked that we please not overload her, as she has enough to grade already.
Mrs. Wray then asked us to take out two pieces of paper, and as we did so A GRAMMAR TOME POPPED OUT!
It was time to work on the appositive! An appositive, for the uninitiated, is a noun phrase that modifies another noun. To aid this along, Mrs. Wray told us a fascinating mashed potato story that I will not be printing here: if you want to hear it, ask her about it. At the end, we were warned to watched out for misplaced modifiers, which I think would make a great alt/rock band name.
To the surprise of some, we were then asked to take out our envelope threads. Remember, kids, Uncle Sam needs you to do your envelope threads everyday. While we did that, the question of what we are doing with the Kite Runner was posed. Mrs. Wray got my hopes up by suggesting interpretive dance, but then shattered my dreams by telling me we will be doing an essay. Perhaps we can have an interpretive dance section tacked onto the end? One can only hope.
We wrote for some twenty minutes about the significance of one of our quotes, or something like that. It happened, moving on. We then turned to discussion. Mrs. Wray started it off by asking how the change of setting has changed the story, and hands shot up like shoots of grass. I forget who said which point, so feel free to claim these as your own, but here were the major points of the discussion. Sorry for the oversimplification.
-The move and the differing circumstances had brought Baba and Amir closer together.
-Baba still dwells on the past, but Amir lives to forget the past, as shown on page 136
-Amir could still be seen as self-centered, for thinking about himself when he hears about Baba’s cancer.
-On the other hand, he could every right to wonder what will happen to himself, as Baba’s death will completely change his world. As Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter said, “Don’t pity the dead. Pity the living”.
Cue to 3:55 for the quote
-It is often harder for the first generation of immigrants to adapt than the second generation, as shown by Baba’s refusal to embrace the American customs.
The bell rang in the midst of our discussion, so if you still have points save them for tomorrow. For homework take a bite of the next section of the delicious Kite Runner. See you next time, my comrades-in-arms!
Edit: I have been informed we have a vocab quiz tomorrow. Apologies for the late notice and STUDY FOR BAKED GOODS
12-5-14
Nora Kearns
Class today began with Ms. Wray informing us about the progress her classes have made on raising funds for smile train. We're up to $211 dollars! (Or something like that...I think. $210?) She then passed around the collection bucket for people to make donations. Hopefully we can reach $500!
Ms. Wray then told us about an extra credit opportunity that everyone (well, almost everyone) was pretty excited about. For 10 points extra credit, you can read All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and attend a class discussion on the Thursday afternoon after Finals are over. The most exciting part of her explaining this to us was when she put a box full of brand-new, hard-cover copies of this beautiful book in the center of the classroom and told us to go for it. So of course we all sprinted towards the box in a mad rush like the literature-crazed children we are. Possibly even better than that was the part where she told us the books were ours to keep. *Angels singing*
We spent the rest of class discussing The Kite Runner. Ms. Wray showed us an interesting video on kite flying/running in Afghanistan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfeNUaKxufA). The video, which was made even more interesting by beautiful cinematography, explained the practice of kite fighting, and also showed the cultural importance of this tradition to the Afghan people.
After watching the video, we moved into discussion. First, we talked about our understanding of Afghanistan and how it contrasted with the Afghanistan described in The Kite Runner. People were surprised by both the physical and political descriptions of Afghanistan in the 1970s. We agreed that, for the most part, when we think of Afghanistan we picture a wart-torn, impoverished country afflicted by terrorism. The Afghanistan we read about in The Kite Runner, however, is much more peaceful. Kabul is a beautiful city with citizens of varying socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. People can socialize and children play together out in public without fear of terrorists.
The majority of our discussion was spent analyzing the most important moments in the first two sections. As a precursor to the discussion, Ms. Wray asked us to write about what we thought to be the three most telling moments in the story so far, and then we talked about these moments as a class. The most obviously important moment was Hassan's assault, and Amir's witnessing of this event. We debated Amir's motives for running away, and whether it was out of fear, or his desire to be loved more that Hassan by his father. Other moments people mentioned included Amir's dream, the party, and Hassan and Ali's departure.
As usual, we were so into the discussion that time flew by and we found ourselves rushing to fit in as many interesting points as we could before the bell rang!
The homework is to continue reading and marking, and to continue with Lit Terms. Have a great weekend!
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11-20-14
Kaity Olsen
So we started off having some technical difficulties with the presentations and in the meantime Mrs. Wray told us about the SmileTrain charity that we will be helping with. Their site is www.smiletrain.org and we have a goal of raising $500 in the next four weeks.
We were handed out the essay rubric which will be next class, so make sure you're ready for that. You can bring in handwritten notes with your thesis, subpoints, and quotes (page/line). If you have questions about your thesis, email Mrs. Wray.
We then heard the presentations on chapter 21 and 22 from Sophie, Steve, Meg, Emi and Anika and chapters 23 and 24 from Tuesday, Katy, Drew, Jessica and Isabelle. So we are officially done with our presentations!
Remember that the Personal Odyssey Project has been moved to being due 12/1 and be working on that this Thanksgiving break.
11-14-14
Jinghuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Lou
Mach 7. Warp Speed. Engines are a go. Launch. English class en route to Planet Learning. Weather: más o menos 30 degrees Fahrenheit, sunny but chilly outside, and skies bluer than that of Alabama. Just how I like it.
To begin the class, we are sadly informed that Ms. Wray's back hurts, and that she is not as elastic as a rubber band at the moment. We wish her a speedy recovery, so that our class can regain that ecstatic pleasure we all know and love when she is at her best.
Groups were scrambling with the intensity of an animal rights activist in New York, to get roles figured out for their presentations that they would present to the present class. Meanwhile, numerous idle individuals checked social media, drew cars, and did pre-calculus homework. I thought they could have spent the time waiting to accomplish more productive and beneficial tasks.
Books 13-14 (Serena, Katherine, Cami)
Cool questions were brought up, including:
- Was Xenia worth maintaining, if there was a risk? (In reference to the Phaeacians sailing Odysseus back home) Possible answers: [y: to uphold the concept of arete and honor] [n: you might die]
- What was the purpose of trickery between Athena and Odysseus? (When Odysseus meets the old "shepherd" at Ithaca) Possible answers: [banter] [to test one another of worthiness] [plain caution]
- Is Odysseus smart or selfish when he convinced Eumaeus to let him stay? Possible answers: [smart: convenient for Odysseus given his need to stay inconspicuous] [selfish: multiple ways to solve an issue, this was not the best]
Here's a cool content map I made of whether or not Odysseus is an ideal hero:Odysseus ideal hero? --> [No], --> {why} --> not peaceful (in today's standards), stupid w/ too much pride.
--> [Yes], --> {why} --> perseverent, (during that time) killing lots of people = hero, and pride was seen as a good trait. (scrubby content map, I won't be an engineer anytime soon.)
Books 15-16 (Nic, Max [wins], Morgan, Kamala) hopefully I spelled everything correctly.
Main entertainment factor: Star Wars reference following Ms. Wray saying "although this isn't Star Wars, please pay attention" --> laughter from class --> successkid.jpg
Cool questions:
- Is Xenia based on glory or hospitality? [glory: hosts want to show off their shiny toys, flex their muscles etc, so their fame spreads around.] [hospitality: just out of the warm kind hearts of the hosts? citation needed ]
- Who's the better father figure for Telemachus? [Odysseus: seen as godlike by everybody, Telemachus looks up to him as a role model, and Odysseus is mentioned more in the story, which shows his influence on his son.]
[Eumaeus: Telemachus would look up to him citation needed as a caretaker who has been there for the majority of his life so far.]Advice for future for future presentations:
-Dress up for Tablet Vivants: you must feel your inner Odysseus, tap into that chakra, and let it gooooo. This will make the audience more engaged and create a reflection across the x-axes of their frowns.
-Spread discussion questions throughout the presentation, otherwise they overwhelm us at the end.
-Less summary, more analysis. We all read the chapters through and through. citation needed
-ENGAGE the audience. Bring it to life.
Advice for audience: Act like you're interested.
Max wins the Good Guy award for engaging the audience in deeper conversations. +5 respect to you.
Homework: actually READ books 21-24, work on your presentations, do your lit terms, brush your teeth, and enjoy life! I had fun typing out this scribe.
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11/6/14
Drew Vogelsang
Today we started off the class by getting new partners! Our first activity was to do a peer edit of our fourth narrative. Mrs. Wray showed us some examples and ideas for how to present our narratives including a small sweater, box of cereal, alarm system, and puzzle. We then were assigned into groups and went out into the hall to line up all of our timelines that we created in the previous class. After four minutes to gather out thoughts, we wrote our group's two questions on the side of the paper and were given three sticky notes. These were used to respond to a question or quote on the other groups' poems. After everyone finished writing their thoughts, the groups reconvened and examined all the ideas that had been posted on our timelines. We then took the posters back into the classroom where we presented them to the class. This is some of what the groups said:
-Book 9: Describes how the way Odysseus behaves with the cyclops shows his pride and ignorance and also makes him out to be an unreliable narrator.
-Book 10: Discusses how the Odysseus views Elpanor as similar to himself, which is why his death is focused on more than the others despite being so minor and foolish.
-Book 11: Describes how the Oracle's telling of Odysseus' future makes him more cocky or bold, also how meeting with his mother reminds him of how he is needed back at home.
-Book 12: Describes how Odysseus is always bouncing back and forth between being helped by the gods and seeking independence.
After the presentations we randomly selected a slip of paper that told us what books we will be presenting on with a small group.
11/4/14
Emi Ampo
Today, our class started out like every other class day with a poem called "Taxi". Mrs. Wray then instructed us to pull out our odyssey narrative draft number three and our four-squared visual response for books 9-12. Our four-squared visual responses were turned in and we found new partners to peer edit our third narrative drafts. While we edited each others papers, Mrs. Wray played some soothing classical piano music. After spending several minutes working on our drafts, Mrs. Wray then asked if we had any questions and whether or not we found "Traci's List of 10" useful.
Then, Mrs. Wray split up the class into four groups by different vegetables. Instead of group one, two, three, and four, the groups included; cauliflower, asparagus, broccoli, and egg plant. Each of the four different groups was assigned one of books nine through twelve. The asparagus group was responsible for book nine, the cauliflower group was assigned book ten, the broccoli group was assigned book eleven, and the asparagus group was responsible book twelve. Mrs. Wray then informed us that our groups would be responsible for creating a timeline of our assigned books. Each group was given a large piece of paper, on top of which we drew timelines for our individual groups and added pink sticky notes with significant quotes and blue sticky notes analyzing the quotes. Some of the groups went into the hallway to work on their timelines. At around 12:55, all the groups were called back into the classroom and Mrs. Wray told us that we would be presenting our timelines next class.
Our homework for Thursday, 11/6/14 is
1. Completing Tome #14, which is the Epic Simile Activity
2. Finishing our fourth personal narrative (draft).
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10/31/14
SophieWeigel
Hey ;) In today's class we walked in like usual, took our seats, and were ready to go. Mrs. Wray read us a poem by Edgar Allen Poe called 'Spirits of the Dead'. Spooky ;o but this being Halloween very appropriate. Next Mrs. used a few slides to tell us about description in our writing, and 'Showing versus Telling.' She mentioned using specific adjectives and descriptive imagery to make sentences less vague. We then were given the broad sentence 'He was an attractive man'. We used description to show what kind of features we thought made an attractive man, and everyone had something quite different to say... We proceeded to re-write more of these sentences, some regarding a stuffed-marie antoinette head, a farting-roomate, and Sophie's boy problems. We then turned in Vocab #5 sentences.
Next, we self-edited our draft of the second Odyssey personal narrative. We high-lighted areas in which we used specific imagery. We then revised vague sentences that relied too much on 'telling'. While discussing the writing in our narratives, Mrs. Wray mentioned there'd be a list on the wiki of ideas/starting points for narrative topics. She also said that diologue doesn't necessarily need to be added to all pieces, but should be emphasized.
We then filled out a T-notes + Visual Response regarding notes from our reading of books 5-8 of the Odyssey about Odysseys/characterization. We filled out the notes from the discussion portion regarding the same topic. One of the things we discussed was heroism and how Odysseys in the present time compared to his heroic reputation from the past.
For homework,
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10/29/14
Isabelle Cullen (ic2017)
Hello class. Today’s class began with the same usual things. The bell rang, and we all came to the door to find it locked. Mrs. Wray came to the rescue and we entered class. The class period began with a general run down of the next hour and a half. That included our 4th vocabulary quiz, an editing exercise to get our brains out of the rain clouds, peer editing of our personal narrative, and reading time so Mrs. Wray could decompress with grading. Of course, we could not do our vocabulary quiz unless we had the Bee Gees to pump us up. With music in mind, Drew was asked to give us a solo of “Stayin’ Alive”. Don't fret. He has a sound cloud. After several failed supplications, Mark stepped into the spotlight and gave us a wonderful falsetto and found out about his crumbling relationship.
After our quiz, the one hundred percent club was brought out. The first quizzes weren’t 100% because some people got a 17/17, but were taken off by mistake. It was corrected. Then, we moved on to our editing exercise with horrendous sentences. With every word, you could hear the nails on the chalkboard, and see the revulsion in everyone’s faces. After that, we moved on to our personal narratives. We had to find a partner and peer edit or self- edit if it was too personal. We read their narrative through one time before we made any markings. The second time through, we could make marks on their narrative. We each had three highlighters. Yellow represented the narrative structure like plot, setting, or conflict. Pink was details. Green was evidence of growth or transformation. We used our pen or pencil to underline vague sentences or ideas that need some more detail. After that, you were supposed to write a paragraph to your partner about two strengths and two places they could improve.
Finally, we read for the remainder of the class. For homework, Mrs. Wray added an extra part to our Odyssey reading. We are supposed to take sticky notes, and in each chapter, identify characterization, continue working on personal narratives, and start your vocabulary sentences for list five. I hope my scribe notes have assisted you with a reminder of the day. Happy early Halloween!
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10/27/14
Max Nguyen
Ms.Wray started the class today with an oxymoron. Happy Monday! There's poop in the Willamette river now too. First and second semester have separate vocab lists. We all thought about standing up. More specifically, we all thought about a time that we took a stand for something that we believed in. Tome #11 is called "Taking a Stand", and it is a brainstorm web of that time you stood up for something. Afterwards, we shared what we wrote about. We then discussed the elements of a good narrative. Yay! Freewrite on our topics. Piano music proved to be quite distracting to the the class. Out of nowhere, we were slapped with the Personal Odyssey project! We are going to write five personal narratives about our odyssey through life. PLEASE DO NOT WRITE ABOUT THE SPECIFICS OF COMING OUT OF YOUR MOTHER, but write about traumatic events surrounding your birth if you choose to write about your birth.
We had a class discussion today about the usage of xenia in books one through four in the Odyssey. Without xenia, the plot would not have been able to progess the way that it did. Telemachus is held to a double standard by his suitors. A person person can't always know for sure who they are dealing with, so people in Ancient Greece decided to treat everyone with kindness. Xenia is practiced out of the goodness of heart. Xenia is to avoid the risk of upsetting someone and getting punished for it. Xenia is a religious practice to the Greeks, so it can be considered a sin when it is violated. Would Telemachus have gotten the same treatment if he looked like a beggar? Xenia is there because people remember what it was like to be on the receiving end of xenia. It could be seen as a restriction on what the Greeks were allowed to do. It's a symbol of social status. Ms.Wray asks us to keep in mind that some people have absent fathers, and she wants to look for the actions that result from a person missing their father.
The homework is to finish a draft of the Personal Odyssey Project and to study for the vocab quiz next class.
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10/23/14
Tuesday Lewman
As always, Thursday was a pretty great day in room 206. Soon after entering class, we engaged in our daily (technically every other day, but you get the idea) jibber-jabber, which led to Ms. Wray confessing her deepest and darkest secret (that we know of…). Orange is the New Black. Like I'm sure the majority of us, we found out that Ms. Wray too has a particular fondness of watching Netflix when she should be sleeping or doing something related to school. Starting off the class period with a moment of realization that teachers really are human too was refreshing. So with that, we gave a little hip hip hooray for Ms. Wray and continued on.
Transitioning from the seemingly endless noise and post-lunch conversations, we continued working on Grammar Tome #2, on adjectival clauses in specific. In this activity, we went over the practice worksheet we did for homework, because who doesn't love some good ole' adjectival clauses?! When this short activity wrapped up, we turned in our Tomes with a simultaneous sigh of relief. Seeing everyone's elaborate Tome cover designs was certainly a highlight of the day. While we were scrambling around adding last minute touches to our Tomes and struggling to assemble all 20something of them into a pile that wouldn't immediately fall over, we got our back poems, Greek mythology quizzes, and vocab list #4 sentences. (Unfortunately, trying to stack our Tomes was a lot like the stressful ending to a heated game of Jenga, many fell).
Much like the creation myths we read a few weeks ago, our class soon went from this state of Tome/papers-being-passed-back induced chaos into order. Since our schedule, like usual was full of Odyssey fun, we got a move on it and started our discussion. It began by Ms. Wray telling us the incest-filled story of the House of Atreus, which is repeatedly brought up throughout The Odyssey. This led us to split into small group discussions with our table mates, where we were given a short section of the text and instructed to summarize, analyze, and present to the class. Presenting AKA discussing AKA a class group discussion essentially broke down all of the important happenings and their significances in Books 1&2 of The Odyssey. This was insightful and very helpful for those who, like me, get a little confused by the introduction of 23059834059828394 characters with unpronounceable names in the span of 30 pages. With each group/table presenting their sections, some important questions were raised. Meg's asking of, "Would humans get fried by the sight of a god?" made all of us stare into space for a moment just to simply internalize such an interesting point. In this brief period of deep thought, an omen was delivered to us by Zeus. Not only did the rain appear to be flooding the parking lot below us, huge amounts of thunder grumbled and the sky was illuminated by feisty bolts of lightning. This divine intervention was likely just a satisfactory round of applause from the Man, Zeus. After this surreal moment, we continued chugging along in our discussion, and came to the conclusion that in Homer's portrayal of Telemachus, he pokes a bit of fun at him. Just as we were wrapping up, from outside we heard someone call "Did you order a jet ski?" and unanimously embraced the Oregonian pride rooted deeply within us.
This discussion gave us all (hopefully), a good feel for The Odyssey, and reassured us that the horror stories delivered by the class of 2015 surely can't be true. With less than a minute left in the period, our discussion was over and we concluded as usual (APEuro students freaking out about whether or not there would be a surprise test the next period, and everyone else just staring oddly at them). As we walked out the door, we turned in our study guide questions and that was that. Ms. Wray's echoed "have a good weekend, everybody!" followed us down the hallway, and we left with a sense of satisfaction that we had survived another week of Honors English. So with that, I hope that everyone has the greatest weekend ever. I hope you watch Orange is the New Black on Netlfix (highly recommended) or relive your childhood glory days by watching Halloweentown (and Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge, and Halloweentown High, and Return to Halloweentown). Whatever you decide to do, don't stress out too much about your homework and do something fun and cool that'll make a good story to tell the rest of us on Monday!!! :))))
Love,
Tuesday
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[[tel:10/121/14|10/121/14]]
Katy Howells
To start the class, Ms.Wray read the poem, "Spelling" by Margaret Atwood. We then started classwork with grammar Tome #2, "Adjectival Clauses". (Used to modify a noun or pronoun). What's the conjugation of "kapeesh"? After finishing the tome, we unfortunately took a quiz on greek figures. According to Steve, a cyclops embodies Miley Cyrus. The next activity was a series of skits showing xenia, hubris, hamartia, arete, metis, kleos, epithet, epic simile and dactylic hexameter. We then learned about Epic Poetry. It begins with an invocation of a muse, starts in action, vast setting, hero, supernatural intervention, important figures and uses epic similes. It also includes and epic hero who on an adventure that decides the fate of a population. This was an intro to the Odyssey by Homer. We ended class by beginning the Odyssey on page 77.
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10/17/14
Jenny Kwon
On Friday, class started out great with the help of Nora's amazing cupcakes (Thank you so much again Nora!). Then Mark proceeded to call Quincy because he had no partner. Unfortunately, Quincy did not pick up.
Getting to the important details, Mrs. Wray gave us a reminder about our Lit Term Projects. Don't forget to mark the lit terms you finish and turn in on your pink tracker sheet! That way you won't resubmit the same one again and make more work for yourself.
Then we discussed our East of Eden essays. Yay. Luckily, Mrs. Wray said that we can sign up for a conference with her and have an opportunity for revision (not of the whole paper though). She will put a sign up sheet on the wiki and there are no limited amount of spots so sign up if you wish! She also reminded us that the importance of this first essay was to learn, so let's not stress to much :)
The last announcement was about how you can win a $20 gift card to Bridgeport Village! If you submit a teen book review to the Lake Oswego Public Library from 10/15 to 12/15 you have a chance to win! There are several gift cards so start writing those reviews :)
Next we worked on revising our Thesis. Mrs. Wray told us that the thesis was both the most important and challenging part of a paper. We discussed what we knew about writing a thesis (asserting a claim, etc.). Then Mrs. Wray showed us various techniques, rules, and information about writing a solid Thesis. These are on the white sheet with the boxes that she handed out the day we got our essays. Some of these are: to have an aspect of suprise, to avoid summarizing the plot, to shape the paper to the purpose, to say something about the text that you discuss exclusively, and more. Then we worked on revising our Thesis statements from our East of Eden essays with our table partners. After that we worked on the paragraph structure of our essays. Mrs. Wray had us go through and mark whether our topic sentences (from the essays) had claims or not. Due to the limited amount of time, we did not get too far but for homework (which is all on the 10H homework tab) we were assigned to rewrite our thesis, or start a new one if it seemed impossible to rewrite the old one, and to revise one body paragraph.
After that, people who didn't finish the Trojan war timelines quickly added final touches, and we discussed about what we thought were the most important parts of the war. Some events that were brought up included Paris' Judgement and the Trojan Horse (ambushing Troy).
For the last 10 or so minutes of class, Mrs. Wray talked about how we would be starting The Odyssey. She gave us a tip to refer to the last pages of our copies for character names and pronunciations (which are extremely difficult...). She then explained a bit about the background of the novel and told us that nothing is in chronological order in the book. Unfortunately, due to the homecoming parade, class was cut 20 minutes short so that is about as far as we got.
Sorry for the late post, I got home from the football game late! Hope everyone has a wonderful rest of their weekend and a shout out to Lauren for being HC princess :)
Sorry again for the late post :)
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10/14/14
Anika Todt
Today, Ms. Wray announced that she was finally going to hand back our East of Eden essays. This was met with a symphony of whispers and groans. Once the noise level had died down, Ms. Wray felt the need to justify, in advance, the grades which we still had yet to see. Apparently this disclaimer was to prevent various objects from being thrown at her as the class left the classroom and left us to wonder exactly how traumitized we would truly be once we got our papers back.
After a bit of searching for the evasive stack of papers, Ms. Wray handed back our vocabulary quizzes. Unfourtunately, we still haven't earned any baked goods.
Our next activity began with a promise that it was going to be "something fun!" and ended with the surprise appearance of a squeegee and a celestial weenis. After a quick transition, Ms. Wray began checking out iPads to the class alphabetically. There were a few complications with the iPads, such as how Nora's Google Drive was in French and one iPad had been changed into chinese, but they were quickly resolved. In addition, Mark attempted to organize the apps into various folders, but decided against the plan after recieving a "look" from Ms. Wray. Before we could get started on the assignment, there was a brief interuption from Wyatt and SaraJane who came in to serve coffee. Once Ms. Wray's coffee needs had been settled, she began to explain our task. We were instructed to list out five of our favorite words on the Google Docs that Ms. Wray had shared with us. She shared a list of her five favorite words with us, including the word "twee", which prompted an onslaught of "tweeing". The list proved to be quite extensive, and even included a word in Latin. Initially, Ms. Wray had planned for each of us to write a poem individually, but the class was able to convince her to change her mind. In the end, we decided to write a poem as a class, with each row completing two lines. The only limitation was to avoid using comic sans and the purpose of the poem was to describe a somersault. These semi-vague guidelines allowed our collective creativity to take hold and the resulting poem had several surprising plot twists.
Next, we were told to get into pairs and craft a timeline for the events of the Trojan War. While we did this, Ms. Wray came around and handed everyone a mysterious scrap of paper with the names of various greek gods and goddesses. She went on to explain that our homework is to make a 3-5 slide powerpoint on the topic that we were given and to include images and citations. We were also given an ominous sheet of paper with the dreaded word "thesis" scattered across the page. This ominous handout remained largely unexplained. The end of class was spent frantically trying to gather our belongings and silently awaiting the arrival of our East of Eden essays before sprinting out of class.
"If someone ever wants to identify an honors english student, their best bet is to look for the kids that are too busy flipping through pages and searching for their grade that they can't form cohherent responses to simple questions." -A (Slightly Annoyed) Junior in My A4 Class
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10/9/14
Nic Quattromani
We had a substitute teacher today, who as it turns out was from the mysterious northern land known as Canada. Class started off with our third vocab quiz. While "Staying Alive" was sadly not played, the fact that we were given candy afterwards more than made up for it. Once everyone had finished with the quizzes we broke into three large groups to discuss the myths of Theseus, Perseus, and Hercules in depth, share our visual myth representations, and fill out the note sheets that had been provided to us. After this task was wrapped up we counted everyone off by threes so as to mix the groups together. Then, in each discussion circle, we took turns summarizing the myths we had studied while those who were not speaking took notes on them; this activity took us to the end of class. All in all, it was a rather fun and informative class period.
Note: Apologies for my belated posting. I went on a trip immediately after school let out on Thursday, and this is the first opportunity I have had this weekend to update the wiki.
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10/7/14
Serena Zhang (serenaaaaaaaa)
We were doomed from the start.
Okay, maybe that was a little over-dramatic, but starting off English class with adverbial practice is basically the same thing.
Luckily though, everyone survived. No coffins needed. And adverbials were conquered yet again.
But wait, there's more!
Because we managed to finish the entire grammar lesson in 5 minutes (a stark contrast to the 40 minutes we took last time), Ms. Wray passed out candy to everyone. #winning. #we'reallowedtousehashtagsright.
Next on miniscule-events-from-our-day-that-no-one-remembers, Ms. Wray proceeded to comfort several students who had a bad case of the sniffles. Try not to get sick, guys! :) Drink fluids, get a flu shot, get lots of slee-HAH.
After the beautiful sniffling symphony finished, Ms. Wray also passed back writing folders from last year, and explained the new policy to pass them back after each year.
Not long afterwards, Steve and Anika had to leave to attend a class senator meeting and something about AP Euro club, respectively. We missed you guys! <3
Then, Ms. Wray passed back our vocab sentences/stories and complimented many of us on our creativity. Jinghui did something about a guy named Douglas, Morgan wrote about vikings, and I wrote about clowns fighting for equality.
That's right. I went there. *does a cool dance move and trips over a desk*
Anyway...
Then we catapulted into our discussion. Ms. Wray, along with the Bible experts in the class, led us through the complicated family lineage of Abraham, which admittedly I forgot the moment I looked away from the board. Oops.
First off, we focused on who we considered to be the least heroic out of the three stories we read: Abraham, Joseph, and David. Some people argued that Abraham was the least heroic, and brought up Abraham's fatal flaw––extreme loyalty––and its negative effect on his son, Isaac. Or Ishmael. Whichever one got the short end of the stick and was almost sacrificed. On second thought, Abraham just didn't do a good job at the whole father-son bonding thing in general, as his other son was banished. Eh.
Those who vouched for Abraham being the least heroic also mentioned his lack of drive and will, which are things that are often correlated with heroes. Abraham always obeyed God's demands and never took charge for himself, even when faced with a morally bad decision like sacrificing his own son. Some even compared Abraham to a coward. The point of Abraham's appearance was also brought up, adding how his old, feeble appearance makes it hard to see him as a heroic figure.
On the other hand, those that saw Abraham in a more positive light argued that his loyalty is more like perseverance. They pointed out that Abraham's extreme loyalty to God could be seen as an extreme love for God, being so moving that Abraham would be willing to do the unspeakable if God asked. Abraham is not fearful of the consequences of defying God, but rather, he couldn't possibly defy God because he is so devoted. People also said that Abraham's actions make him valiant, as it is challenging to go against one's beliefs and morals.
I found a video that connects to our whole hero discussion (kinda...). I promise you will like it.... just click >.<
- Jessica
Now back to Serena's scribe notes :)
(There were a lot of other great points made, but then this post would become excessively long^2 because it is already excessively long. And no one likes quadratics.)
The remainder of our class was spent reading "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young" by Wilfred Owen on page 79. Each row was assigned two lines of the poem and instructed to carefully analyze each word and what it adds to the meaning of the poem. Some groups made connections to WW1, as Owen was a soldier, and sadly died one week before the end of the war at the age of 25. The difference between tone and mood was established (tone is the author's attitude, while mood is the general feeling of the poem.)
As always, we were avidly discussing well into the last few seconds of class. I wonder if there will ever come a day that we actually finish before the bell rings...
And now, dear reader, I must head to bed so I can get a solid 5 hours of sleep tonight. (Ms. Wray, pretend you didn't see that. I'm a good student, I swear.)
Goodnight, fellow sleep-deprived friend!
(Now here's a video of a bunny eating a raspberry. Excuse me while I gush incoherently over my computer screen.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9HV5O8Un6k
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[[tel:10/3/2014|10/3/2014]]
Lauren Gilbert
Today class began with the pleasant surprise of a new student named Drew who came to Lake Oswego all the way from Pennsylvania! He shared a few things about himself, such as his love for outdoor activities, as well as his hobby of listening to Indy rock music. He and Mark found that they have something in common in their mutual like for jazz. After being introduced to our new student, we began to analyze the archetype of a hero and we discussed how our idea of what a hero is has changed over time. A wide variety of compelling ideas were shared during the discussion, but these are a few noteworthy ones that I jotted down:
After our enlightening discussion on the layered meanings of a hero and the ways in which heroes have evolved from their original archetype, we read an article about a novel that was written during the time of 9/11 that contradicted the idea of a hero that was inspired by this tragic event. Post 9/11, the heroes were the firefighters and policemen who were saving lives, as opposed to the people who were compelled to make changes without the goal of defeating an opponent, as was written in the article. We discussed the following general questions with regards to the article: Does the hero always need an enemy? Do we still look to heroes to fight in the face of evil as opposed to bring proactive ourselves? Are heroes relevant when evil is not present?
Lastly, class concluded with brief small group discussions on the biblical stories of "Abraham," "Joseph," and "David." Although we did not have much time to discuss, we were able to touch on the varying aspects of these biblical heroes that set them apart, and whether, as readers who are part of modern society, we necessarily see all three of these figures as heroes.
Sorry these are so late everyone... clearly I am a challenged wiki user. I know you were all very anxious to see the scribe notes since you started writing them yourselves, so at last, here they are! :)
[[tel:10/3/2014|10/3/2014]]
Shockingly, nothing at all happened on this day other than some vague mumbling and the revelation that I (Morgan) look like John Green.
Morgan, that was a beautiful scribe entry.
Love,
Mark
^ A little more happened that day, so I'll add some details: We welcomed Phillip (his name is Drew not Phillip) to the class, and we also shared observations we had among the 3 stories of "Joseph", "David", and "Abraham". We discussed about the relationship of God to Man, and said something relating to 9/11. In addendum, I inhaled and exhaled to fuel my electron transport chain, which carried out basic bodily functions such as removing carbon dioxide waste from my cells while absorbing lipids. Mmm. It was 75 degrees Fahrenheit with a 4 mph tailwind. A biker drowned out the class for a moment with the relentless engine of his/her Harley Davidson motorcycle. I had a premonition that Cameron Dean would wreck Homecoming. Can this count as my scribe participation? (Jinghui).
Who ever was scribe on 10/3/14 needs to post his/her notes. Tsk tsk... ;P (Besides.. I had a cool song to add that had something to do with our class discussion)
Adios muchachos. See you all tomorrow... ugh school.... :/
- Jessica <3
(Comments on discussion page everyone)
[[tel:10/1/2014|10/1/2014]]
Kamala Woods
As we drifted into the classroom in response to the bell, Ms. Wray informed us to arrange our desks in a circle, which could only indicate one thing…..a discussion! Once we had adjusted the lop sided shape so that everyone could fit, Ms. Wray read to us the poem “Traveling through the Dark” by William E. Stafford. The first two lines were met with slightly shocked responses from the class.
Here is the link for the poem for those who are interested: __http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171495__
The instructions for the Tomes were clarified and Ms. Wray informed us that the Tomes would be due anywhere during the next three weeks. The due date will be announced once it has been finalized, and there will be no surprise Tome turn-ins, much to our relief!
Here are the instructions for the Tomes:
There will be two separate table of contents, one for normal Tome entries and the other one for vocabulary. The vocabulary entries will not be part of the normal entries, thus the pages will be numbered separately.
The Tomes will consist of four main sections, one for each quarter.
Once Ms. Wray had straightened out the expectations for the Tomes, she moved us into…..GRAMMAR! She resolved the confusion surrounding last class’s grammar lecture with sentence diagrams, which allowed for us to see the difference between adverbial and adjectival sentences.
After we had our grammar discussion, we proceeded with a poetry discussion! Ms. Wray informed us that we had ten minutes to discuss each poem, although this instruction was soon ignored. Eighteen minutes passed and we were in a deep discussion analyzing the poem “End of Summer”. Some very insightful observations were made, and even though we all read it in our own ways, the class concluded that this poem illustrated the end of youth as the narrator realized that the final destination was death, and that all of his dreams and opportunities died within the winter’s cruel wind. Yes, it was a very pessimistic poem. The next poem we advanced with was “The Red Wagon”, which was read by the majority of the class. This poem was met with widely different observations, including the Alzheimer view presented by Sarah, which was followed with a short lecture from Ms. Wray informing us not to read too much obscurity into the text. Aside from the different perspectives each of us had, we were all able to agree that the poem portrayed a young boy’s journey through life and the responsibilities that come with adulthood. The red wagon the boy received for his birthday carried him down the road of life and passed the different stages of his existence until it met a broad plane where the sun was setting, a symbolization of the peace death offers. Out of sensitivity of time, we moved on to analyze “Eden is that Old Fashioned House” which was chosen by the minority of the class. The perspectives of this poem were relatively similar. Each observation discussed the processes of drifting away, by choice, from childlike innocence and facing reality. The poem demonstrated how individuals takes the ease of childhood for granted and it is only when something is lost that it is missed.
Wrapping up the class, Ms. Wray stopped the discussion and asked us to turn in our poetry analysis. A couple of minutes before the bell rang, she communicated to us our homework for the night. The bell rang, and we were released to carry out our day.
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9/29/14
Jessica Seropian
The day started off pretty normally. The bell rang, but of course no one paid any mind to it and just kept on chattering with their friends. After Ms. Wray quieted the class, she had us turn in our vocab sentences and then announced that a grand total of FOUR people had already turned in part of their Lit Terms project. She suggested that everyone get started so that we won't be crunched for time next quarter. Also she read off the names of the people who got 100% on the last vocab quiz. Unfortunately, we did not earn baked goods as five people did not quite reach a 100%. It's okay though. We'll all do a better job next time!
The poem today was "Mother to Son" my Langston Hughes. There were many sounds of recognition as Ms. Wray read the opening lines.
After that, we got our Creation Skit scores back. There was much chatter as we all discussed our scores and critiques.
Then we came to the first lesson of today's class. GRAMMAR (dramatic eye-roll courtesy of Sarah). We learned about adverbials. Here is a quick synopsis of the lesson:
Adverbial - Any single-word adverb or adverbial phrase or clause that describes the verb or the whole subject+verb as a unit. An adverbial usually tells how, when, where, or why (about the verb).
Examples:
Quietly, the refugees leaned against the walls of the ruck
Because the truck bounced on the bumpy road, the child had not slept in two days,
Because people were confused, Ms. Wray said that we'd go over adverbials again on Wednesday. Then we moved on to a quick chat about our Think Pieces. According to our mini classroom poll, nobody read "Janet's Waking" because we had all read it last year in ACS.
Next we moved on to Thomas Cole's picture gallery. The rest of class was spent discussing the gallery and the discussion was fairly in depth. We talked up until the bell rang.*
Homework: There was no homework assigned to us today, so instead make sure to get plenty of sleep and rest tonight and tomorrow.
*Disclaimer: I'm sorry, but I am far too tired to go in depth about the discussion from today's class, but please feel free to add any details that you thought were important.
9/25/14
Sarah Kwartler
Well, you can tell by the way I mark my book,
I’m an Honors English kid: with fishbowl talk.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin alive, stayin alive. Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin alive.
There you have it, the Honors English version of the famous Bee Gees’ song. I suppose that the song was there to encourage us to get 100% on the 25-question vocabulary quiz in hopes of getting, you guessed it: BAKED GOODS! Though we were invited to dance to the wonderful music, we were all too listless, except for Jessica and Isabelle who proved that they are the Dancing Queens.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_izvAbhExY
Today’s poem was “If We Take” by Charles Bukowski, a motivated and helpful poet…If you count his motivation towards getting drunk and define helpful as telling writers not to try. Still, if you want to take a peek at the poem, here is the link. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=2524073&mesg_id=2524256
After the daily poem, we resumed our Flood Myths discussions. Here’s a quick briefing on some fantastic comments.
-Esteban, Jinghui, and Morgan: Created an analogy to a Detroit nightclub that was much better than any of Foster’s, so that makes them Mega-Professors.
-Nora, Katherine, and Isabelle: Reached the conclusion that water is life and death, and that the floods aren’t destruction, but the cleansings of sin.
-Kamala, Emi, and Meg: Shared their observations about the animals in the myths and discussed the role of women in the myths.
-Serena, Jessica, Anika, and I: The ripple effect of sins, or as I put it, one drop of poison destroys the well.
-To the other groups that I didn’t mention, I’m sure that you made amazing comments, but I was too lazy to write them down. Don’t blame me; I am Fortune’s fool. I probably was fated to write that. Now, I’m going to exert my free will and stop referencing Romeo and Juliet because it is so 1590s.
By the time that we finished discussing the Flood Myths, the minute hand was ticking closer to 1:05. Nevertheless, Ms. Wray shooed us out the door to do a speed gallery walk of our flood myth artwork. Thanks to the rush, I doubt that any of us actually wrote down any comments. However, I did have a few thoughts about the artwork:
-Best color blending: Kamala
-Best symbols: Serena
-Best A.P. European History Great Chain of Being Triangles: Nora
-Best Stick Figures: Esteban, but it was a close race.
For the aforementioned people, please feel free to donate your art talent to me.
Anyways, by the time we returned to the classroom, it was 1:04 (I know this because I finally found my watch) and all of us were eager to pack up. Yet, Ms. Wray still assigned us a poetry analysis and vocabulary sentences that we will all dread during the coming weekend. Okay, so maybe not the vocabulary sentences because those are helpful and at least she was generous enough to allow us to get some sleep this week by delaying the poetry analysis.
Great. I wrote too much again. I should probably stop now and go watch the end of the Giants football game. Go Giants and have a marvelous weekend!
9/23/14
Morgan Lloyd
As the day started off, we wandered into class, regaled in our costumes scrounged from common household items in a manner to make McGyver proud. Little did we know what was in store for us today and the horror that we would come to face. Today was Creation Myth Skit day, a day we will never forget.
It was also Dogs in Politics day, the manner of which was quite confusing to the class. Does this mean that dogs should be elected to office or that more humans in office should adopt a pet? I, for one, am for the latter theory.
From there we passed out the PSAT brochures, an event that I have unsuccessfully tried to block from my memory. I was quite surprised by the depth of knowledge that the class seemed to have regarding the subject, as our poor scribe knows next to nothing about the test. Knowing is half the battle, though, so perhaps I should start looking into these matters.
After that we moved to our skits. We began with the riveting tale of “Bachelorita”, a creation myth involving three lovestruck men battling it out for the hand of the Creator (Katy Howells) in marriage. After a lengthy ocean-based pun battle, two of the men shut the full cup and Man #3, played by our own Steve Dobrioglo, was the winner.
Next we had “The Cooler Creation”, which I think would have made a spectacular banned Captain Planet episode. (Video below for those who never watched the show.)
http://youtu.be/vpXM9bj-WPU
We began with the lovely Creator, played by Jinghui Lou, giving birth to the Earth itself in a rather literal manner, and from there creating a variety of wondrous creatures. It’s a shame he/she never truly seemed to know what was going on. Better luck next time, eh?
Next was our own skit, which I can’t really describe since I was acting in it. It was fantastic, moving on.
“Flawless” was next, describing a time when men thought themselves superior to woman until they were taught otherwise by the women inspired by the sweet tones of Beyoncé, performed by Serena Zhang. All the single ladies soon settled things right, leading to the utopian society that I wish we had today. It’ll happen sooner or later, I suppose.
Last but not least we had “Ireaminity”, which I most definitely spelled wrong, the tale of a matriarchal society and their touching creation story. When Darkness cried tears of isolation, I found myself crying a little too. Comment if you agree. All in all it was a very well done skit to cap off the other amazing performances.
After that we moved to a flood myth discussion, talking about our interactions with the different myths of the packet and our own experiences with these myths. One question stood, overarching the entire conversation; was is genocide, or Genesis? It’s like a Zen riddle, huh? But unfortunately, we ran out of time and had to leave the bulk of the discussion for Thursday. Happily we left the classroom and the day was over. Truly it was one for the annals.
And now, for your entertainment, a shrimp on a treadmill.
http://youtu.be/cMO8Pyi3UpY
And if anyone knows how to embed the videos in the thing please do
9/19/14
MeganMSmith
Today, the class had an air of humor and slight desire to go home, as is typical of Fridays in class. Ms. Wray started the class by expressing her gratitude for meeting our parents at Parent Night, and how she could see why we are all such lovely people. Thanks, Ms. Wray. We really are amazing people due to our parents' genetics and methods of upbringing.
Then, with the logistical discussions of last night's homework (work on the myth skit), she addressed some of the issues with Google Docs and how if you were using a school-issued email, there were some problems regarding discussions and chats in documents. This led into a brief yet fascinating tangent about the issues with technology and how it is affecting (not effecting) our society and its standards. The general consensus seemed to be that while the possibility of major corporations or government agencies using technology (ie, cell phones, computers, social media sites) to glean information might be helpful in protecting the country from threats might be too extreme of an invasion of privacy. I, personally, think that it might be okay to have entities monitoring phones and social media isn't too horrible because of the benefits of technology. Besides, they'd probably see us rocking the Snapchat double chin face 80% of the time. Ms. Wray recommended http://The Circle by Dave Eggers for a fictional interpretation of this social issue.
Ms. Wray also expressed appreciation for the humor and cooperation expressed in Scribe notes. Thanks for the expectations on my day to do the scribing. But seriously, these things can be comedy gold.
Also, go see Ms. Wray if you're interested in LitPo (literary/poetry/all things word) Club. Next meeting is at break in the next few days? (if anyone knows anything else about the date please edit it in here)
Moving right along, today's poem in class was http://readalittlepoetry.wordpress.com/2012/11/03/poppies-by-mary-oliver/ (link opens to poem). It tied in nicely with the overarching themes of the cycles of life, death, and rebirth that we discussed in class.
Then, we had a pop quiz, much to the agony of most students. It was the University of Mottsburgh's Grammar Income test, which claimed to predict an individual's future income based on their knowledge of grammar. Most students scored lower than they expected, and this was quite the travesty to some. However, it was revealed that this was just a made-up exercise about the 20 most common grammar errors in the English language. There was no study, the University of Mottsburgh isn't real, and Dr. Edward McCormick wasn't real. Grammar is not the sole measure of intelligence, and intelligence isn't the sole measure of employability. (Still, put some effort into your writing. Seriously.) (You all are fine, but other people might not be.) So even if your grammar stinks right now, that can be fixed with education! We will start our grammar unit next class on Tuesday so that Tuesday and the others can become "employable," at least by the fictional Dr. McCormick's predictions.
Also on the subject of grammar, Ms. Wray showed an amusing YouTube video in class. Weird Al Yankovich, being the force of crazy-haired good he is in this world, had taken Robin Thicke's horrifying, dehumanizing, rape culture-perpetuating song "Blurred Lines" and covered it in the grammatically correct and catchy "Word Crimes," which we can all agree is better than the origional.
Here's to Weird Al. May he live long and continue making funny and relevant music. And let's hope Robin Thicke goes out, gets a haircut, and reevaluates his life choices and system of morality. What an ignoramus.
We then went off, giggling to ourselves, to work on our skits. I don't know about you guys, but I think my group's skit is going to be fantastic! Super excited for next class!
Our homework for the weekend is to go on the wiki (congrats, if you're reading this you're here and that's half the work) and look over the images Ms. Wray has posted a link to. We should also read the Flood Myths packet and look over the Loss-Quest handout. We are then to complete a drawing featuring common elements of the Flood Myths/Loss Quest Archetype instead of a Venn Diagram. In addition, work with your skit groups to polish your final script and prepare for the performance on Tuesday.
Happy Weekend! --Meg
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9/17/14
Rhys Richmond
Mrs. Wray started the class off with a nice scenic picture of a mountain. The class failed to understand why the picture was there until she prompted us with several motions and questions. One person exclaimed "Hump day!" which lead to Mrs. Wray explaining why she did not want to google image search the word "hump", instead searching for "pretty/scenic green mountains/hills/peak". This lead to a brief discussion during which several classmates told Mrs. Wray she should have searched for the "Hump Day" Geico commercial (see below).
Hump Day Commercial
This is the commercial. :)
After the amusing conversation subsided, Mrs. Wray asked the class if we wanted to see our first vocabulary tests back (the answer, a resounding "yes"). After everyone reviewed their grades, Mrs. Wray pointed out the location of the "100% club" list in the classroom (the rear bulletin board) and reminded us that if we got a 100% on every vocab test we would not have to take the vocabulary section of the final in January. After remarking that she was sad she did not get to bake cookies for the class, she reminded us of the Sophomore Honors English Quizlet and announced an extra credit opportunity:
* If you sign up for losophshonors (you can find a link on the left-hand side of this wiki) by Thursday, you get extra credit! (so Mrs. Wray can stalk your vocab studying progress! :)**
Mrs. Wray then went on to discuss the new-this-year Tome. Since she had already had several students ask her questions about the purpose/organization/content of the Tome, she told us several facts about the Tome to hopefully help us grasp it better:
- The Tome is an active Transaction - Mrs. Wray gives you input, and the Tome acts as a function (think Algebra!!) for you to produce output
- The Tome is for interaction and interpretation on a deeper level.
- You must interact with the Tome to avoid it turning into "busy work" for you to do and for Mrs. Wray to grade
Still, several classmates had questions regarding whats, whys, whens and wheres - but they were easily resolved within 10 minutes of discussion.From there, Mrs. Wray collected our final drafts of our poems and debated also collecting the Tome entry where we drew our hands and wrote connections to our fairy tale/song/story inside. The idea was shot down when several students remarked that their "hands" could not be easily cut out.
From there, Mrs. Wray went over the late work policy (daily work is not accepted late, cumulative assignments are accepted late with a penalty of 10% per day late) and added a small amendment. Now, a student may have ONE "freebie" card per semester where they may turn in a late assignment late with no penalty. Several students have already cashed in their freebie, but the majority of the class still has their "one-off" intact.
Then, with half of the class remaining, Mrs. Wray passed out "Honest" notecards and asked us to rate East of Eden on a scale of 1-10, justify the rating with a sentence and write down any discussion topics that we may have wanted to discuss but didn't get a chance to in our structured Fish-Bowl discussion groups. While most students were generous with 7-10 ratings of the book, Mrs. Wray exclaimed with faux-horror when she discovered that an unidentified someone had rated the book 4/10 (along with two others rating it 5/10). Mrs. Wray then let us know that the majority of us (me included) thought that the book was too long/got boring in certain sections.
Next, Mrs. Wray exclaimed, "We're almost to the fun part!" This was met with a few questioning looks and several appreciative sounds from the class. But before we could get to the "fun" part, Mrs. Wray numbered us off 1-5 and asked us to get together with our respective number groups. There, we discussed the two packets of myth readings we have accomplished so far. Mrs. Wray made sure we knew that there are many, many ways to look at and analyze myth and to not think David Leeming (the author) has a monopoly on myth interpretation. In our group discussions, we compared our Venn Diagrams of 3/5 myths. After roughly 5 minutes, Mrs. Wray brought the discussion back out to the class, asking individual groups to provide insight on what was alike/different across the various creation myths.
This discussion quickly turned into debating the ethical qualities of snakes (as they appeared in several of our Creationism stories) and the possibility that humans dislike them either because A. We are jealous of their ability to slither, B. They could have been thought of as animals who had sinned in the past (due to some Christians having previously believed that cripples were crippled because of their sins) or C. The Human evolution-oriented innate response of fear due to some snakes being poisonous. From that point, each numbered group had a creation myth from the packet to discuss. Unfortunately, my group received the Mesopotamian. Out of five people, no one had a clue what the exact plot line referred to or how to even begin to discuss it. Thankfully, Mrs. Wray told us that we would never be tested on the Mesopotamian creation myth, a sentiment met with extremely thankful sighs from the students.
Finally, Mrs. Wray moved to the "fun" part of the class - which turned out to be a homework assignment. Each of the 5 groups is in charge of creating a creation myth skit that meets the five criteria for a myth (traditional tale/story, set in past, ostensibly "true", often explain, justify, instruct or warn). The remainder of the class was devoted to brainstorming. The following buzz of chatter was often interrupted with a loud burst of laughter from a group or two. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wray prowled the classroom, occasionally asking each group what they had thought of so far. In the final minutes of period A3, Mrs. Wray instructed us to create a google doc shared with all members of our group. In addition, we must share the doc with her so she can check up on our progress.
As everyone readied their backpacks, Mrs. Wray ended the class with the remark that she was very glad that a certain group had scrapped their idea of having a creationism myth start with a piece of poop in a toilet bowl. This opinion was met with much laughter just as the bell rang.
! - Make sure you contribute to your groups Google Doc in a timely matter - it's not fair to your classmates if you wait until 11PM on Thursday, September 18th to write your part.
9/15/14
Quincy Hyun
Today was the first day of our class' new assigned seating arrangement which resulted in a chorus of sighs and groans. After a few hectic minutes, our class had been officially jumbled, with girls sitting with their new gal pals and what seemed like only a handful of boys scattered throughout the room. Without any further delay, Ms. Wray got right to it. Once we were all settled, we were given two options: take our vocabulary quiz right now at the start of class or postpone it until the end of class. We unanimously decided to get this thing over with. In order to retain my "academic integrity" I shall not describe the test. I won't mention that it was multiple choice, or that we had to know the parts of speech for our vocabulary words which had caught me off guard, hypothetically speaking of course. After the last quiz paper was in (mine) Ms. Wray was already swooping in and out of the desks, handing us our second vocab sheet; this one with 15 brand new words that I suspect that we will be encountering soon in our readings. Next up, was our Tome Syllabus. Much like Mrs. Huss' Learning Logs portfolio the freshman Honors English class completed last year, the Tome is basically a collective story of each student's individual experiences in this class. I am very excited to see what my own Tome looks like by the end of the year.
The daily poem was "Mirrors" by Sylvia Plath which, in my opinion, was a little too dark for me. I mean, the woman in the story sees exactly what she dreads in her mirror everyday yet she constantly goes back to check on it? The purpose of the mirror in the poem is to strip away all of the masks that the woman has over herself, and reveals who she really is inside. At the root of this poem, Plath is trying to show us the battle between our inner and outer selves.
After the daily poem, we moved onto our own, peer editing the drafts of our own classmates. Mark generously filled my paper with constructive comments including "woah dawg" and "ay ay!" which gave me a lot of confidence in the construction of the final draft of our poem, due next class. We were given around 10 minutes to edit our peer's drafts.
Immediately afterwards we were given yet another handout (thank goodness no one was gone today because they would have to hunt down a lot of papers). This one was a more in depth checklist for revising and writing poetry. We could have used that BEFORE we marked up each others papers... but it is a very helpful sheet to have and it will really help clear up my future poetry. Now after all that sitting and listening, we got a quick water break, though little did I know Ms. Wray had saved the real meat and potatoes of the class for when we got back.
Once our class filed in once again, Steve, our newly elected class senator, gave a short speech on the news he got from his first senator meeting. However, he had recently lost a contact in his right eye and his handwriting was never superb to start with (sorry Steve) and so reading for him was quite the challenge. However, he completed his task with both grace and eloquence as he covered up one of his eyes and held his paper away from his face at arms length.
For the rest of class we proceeded to discuss all of the myths we had read in a full class conference. The topic quickly steered towards the premise of how "youths do not feel the need to learn the scientific way things work and instead use myths and stories to explain the experiences they have so far collected into their own subconscious". After we all had our chance to rephrase this idea in our own way, Sarah and Ms. Wray brought up another question that re-sparked our discussion, "What is the difference between myth and science?" After all, the so called science centuries ago has now been scoffed at and considered a myth. However, who is to say that we ourselves have discovered the "true" science of things. In a thousand years will scientists look at our claims and chuckle to themselves? This question snowballed into the classic question, "Is our view of existence the real view or it is simply a fragment of the universe as a whole?" How can we be right if we are a speck in the universe? And how can we be sure we're right?
These deep questions brought us up to the bell. However, this didn't stop Ms. Wray from letting us know what we needed to complete next class. She explained that she wanted a three-way venn diagram of some of the creation myths we have read, a final draft of our poem, as well as 17 well written sentences that exhibit the proper use of our new vocab words. Work is starting to pile up in Ms. Wray's English Class but I'm sure that we can all handle it. Enjoy the rest of your day/evening/night fellow reader!
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9/11/14
Katherine Grisham
Despite being only into the fourth day of class, Serena was already ahead of the game on lit terms, reminding us all that we should probably get a head start on it too.
After routine attendance, where it is becoming increasingly easier to match the names to the face (good job Ms. Wray), but before the poem of the day, was the emptying of folders and gathering of projects from last years Honor English class. While most were reminiscing over their thick stack of papers, Morgan thoughtfully recommended that the stack should be burned.
Today's daily poem was "Same Song" by Pat Mora. This poems accurately portrays the binding stereotypes that are put on teens by society, yet tying in "fairy tale" allusions and intertextuality. We are to use this poem as a template to create our own poems from our stories over the weekend and have a draft ready on Monday (You can change your story if necessary)
Next the class dived into fishbowl discussions, beginning with a brief breakdown of the previous class's fishbowl. The first fishbowl group of the day analyzed to prompt "How do landscape and setting tie into meaning in the novel" (I am just going to give a brief bullet point overview of the discussion for each group)
- seasons of farming represents cycle of growth and rebirth
- exposure to a different setting could have created a different story (i.e. if Caleb and Aron were born in a city vs rural farm)
- in response to the latter point it was brought up that isolation that having the characters isolated helps focus on them (rather than have them in a city where the author would have to also focus on city routines)
- characters from east are fallen, coming from a fallen place
- Lee was from the west making him "unfallen"
- Overall despite where each character was from, everyone was trying to find their own eden
Swiftly after that group had wrapped up, the next group with the prompt "How does John Steinbeck utilize archetypes and Biblical allusion in his book" traded seats with clearly relieved students and began discussing and almost immediately a fascinating topic arose.
- before Salinas valley there was an ocean, the ocean dried up yet some water remained, Samuel Hamilton living in Salinas valley was in a sense walking on water. Plus he could easily find water to make wells.Thusly he could be considered a Christ-like figure.
- another connection was made with Lee, he left the Trask residence for his bookstore, then returns a week later. Symbolizing Lee "dying" then coming back to life more or less.
- back and forth it was discussed who was more of a christ figure Lee or Sam. It was also brought up that Sam could be potentially be God or a prophet
- Kate is not truly evil, more of she isn't aware of what she is missing
- Caleb and Joshua was a parallel legend that stands for Caleb surviving and Aron dying
- Aron could not except reality, creates his own world
- Caleb aware of harsh reality
Last was my group, "how does stein back use characterization to create meaning in the novel". Sadly since I was in that group, I have the least amount of information as to what occurred, seeing how I was trying to find an opportunity to jump (which as you may have noticed were slim thanks to my colleagues already proving my points) But I can tell you that characterization was mostly discussed throughout the other fishbowls. So if you were paying attention during those, then you should have a good idea of what characterization went on.
*Sorry for posting this so late*
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9/9/14
Yoshi919 (Mark Yazhari)
We began the day with a poem called, "Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad." At first, I thought that the speaker was being pretty insulting to her dad; it wasn't exactly flattering to state that her dad wouldn't drown while swimming. However, the poem's main purpose and tone became apparent at the end – in retrospect, the speaker has recognized that her father had imperfections but was trying his best in life and had a good heart – and I, for one, could not help but cry under my desk.
Ms. Wray passed back our vocabulary sentences, but Quincy, sadly, had forgotten to write his name on his. Maybe next time.
Perhaps more important than Quincy's forgotten name was when everyone shared about his or her favorite or most memorable childhood story. Harry Potter was chosen by multiple people (and for good reason), but there were also some more obscure stories. Going back to Quincy (doesn't it always go back to Quincy?), he chose "Puff the Magic Dragon," a song that his father used to sing to him and one that was his first song to learn on the piano. Nic mentioned Calvin and Hobbes as his favorite childhood story/comic because of Calvin's limitless imagination, and Cami talked about the stories she read by an author of children's Christian books that largely affected her identity in the Church. And, of course, Nora's aunt invented gravy.
Next, Ms. Wray had us continue on our hand activities by writing powerful words, phrases, images, or emotions evoked from our stories around the outline of our hands. For homework, I believe we are supposed to explain how our stories connect to the stories of our life; that is, how they fit in the larger scope of our existence and identity. I've got to hand it to you, Ms. Wray – this activity is pretty cool!
Now it was time for the much anticipated (or dreaded) East of Eden fishbowl discussion. To start things off, Ms. Wray apologized that the Google fish image she chose to represent the fishbowl did not show up on our fishbowl discussion sheet. I, of course, was deeply disappointed, and I could not help but cry under my desk for the second time.
Back to the fishbowl discussion. Ms. Wray assigned everyone to one of the four discussion groups. I was thrilled to get Discussion 1, which was about the nature of good and evil. It is such a fundamentally important topic and is portrayed so skillfully through the contrast of Steinbeck's characters. There was much discussion about how Calvin is the most relatable character in the book, because he represents the human struggle against one's lower nature and shortcomings. Even though Aron seems to act more virtuously, he is often too rigid and inflexible in his beliefs. This was just one of the many great points made during this first discussion, and, luckily, there was no fishing for answers.
Finally, we had the excitement of nominating and voting for this year's class senator. While all of the candidates were very qualified (especially the last one), the class favorite was undoubtedly Steve, who had no idea what the senator does but promised to do a good job of whatever he was supposed to do. Esteban, we are all very proud of you.
It is surprising that this was only the third class of the year; everyone in the class seems to be connecting really well, and all of our discussions have been interesting. I can tell that this is going to be a great year!
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9/5/2014
norakearns
Ms. Wray began today's class by pointing out, as Steve mentioned in his previous scribe, the gender-segregated classroom. She promised to integrate the group with a seating chart that everyone is extremely excited to be using next period. After taking roll and attempting to master everyone's names, she explained the losophs wikispace and our vocabulary quizzes and assignments. (The first vocab quiz is on the fifteenth, one week from Monday).
She then moved into introducing our Lit Terms project, putting a final stamp on the beginning of the school year: summer is officially over, projects are in full swing. As she explained, she sensed the fear and apprehension in the room, but she assured that this project, which will be carried out throughout the year and will require us to develop a full understanding of literary devices and their purposes, will help us tremendously in the future.
Before transitioning into our How to Read Literature Like a Professor discussion, Ms. Wray read an interesting poem entitled, "Love Like Salt," by Lisel Muller.
As she pulled out How to Read Literature Like a Professor, it was apparent that we would have a discussion full of varied opinions. Muted groans could be heard from some parts of the class, while others mentioned thinking it was "not that bad." Ms. Wray instructed us to write single-sentence responses to lit log prompts, but reminded us with a smile that strategic punctuation could be used to extend our responses.
When the discussion began and hands started flying in the air, it became clear that our class is full of strong, independent voices. Many felt that Foster was too long-winded and overly-confident of his opinions, and approached literary interpretation too matter-of-factly, but some found the text interesting and helpful. Nic described HtRLLaP as a "toolbox" full of tools and suggestions for approaching complex literature. In response to opinions that using all of Foster's guidelines for reading made reading less enjoyable, Mrs. Wray commented that sometimes it's appropriate to take out the toolbox and use it to help interpret text, and other times, the toolbox can be put away.
After the discussion, yellow papers were passed out, and we were asked to trace our hands. We drew three lines in the middle of our hands: our life line, love line, and health line, and wrote events or things on the lines that were important to each of these parts of our lives.
Before the bell rang, we went through the homework: writing about a story, book, or song that was a part of our childhood, and completing the fishbowl discussion preparation sheet for our East of Eden discussion on Tuesday.
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9/3/14
dobrioglo.steve
When the class first entered into the room, it quickly split into two sections: boys and girls. While it was revealed that there is a three to one ration correlation between the two genders, no one really cares, although it seems interesting that no one has mentioned that all of the boys huddled together in one side of the room. It was as if they were scared that they might be separated from one another, much like a family of opossums sticks together out of fear of being in contact with the owls of the forest. However, unlike a family of opossums, none of the guys played dead which is always a good sign.
To start off the grand adventure that is Sophomore Honors English, Ms. Wray started off the class by reading the poem "Lines", written by Martha Collins. While yes, the poem did have a rather romantic theme, Ms. Wray pointed out that it can also symbolize all of the connections we will make together as a class throughout the school year. The latter interpretation is more preferable, mostly due to the fact that as a class I think most of us don't think of the entire class in a romantic way (sorry to break it to all who had thought otherwise).
After the poem reading Ms. Wray started attendance, where she discovered all of the nicknames of everyone in the class. For instance, Max likes to pronounce his last name as "Wins". So everybody now has to admit that, yes indeed, Max Wins. What he will win, we will just have to wait and see. It can honestly be anything or everything. Steve (me) has a wide range of nicknames, in which the most known is Esteban. On the other hand, we may have to mark up Mark for not having a nickname this far in the school year.
After attendance, we played a "guess who" type of game where each individual in the class wrote down an activity they did during the summer and the entire class had to guess who did which activity. Ms. Wray said it was fine if we threw the little pieces of paper into the basket where we would keep them, so not surprisingly the class was soon filled with future LeBron James. Well, if LeBron James was not the man he is today (no offense class mates who threw their piece of paper, but I'm just saying: not a single thrown piece of paper was made into the basket). But nonetheless, it was proven that the entire class has a lot of spirit when everyone applauded loudly whenever someone guessed correctly on who their person was. Now, the highlights of the game: Rhys hang-glided, but Nic thought it was Morgan, who rebutted by saying "No way. My life is not that adventurous". This may not be true when we found out that Morgan was a councilor at Tryon Creek, where the little kids would call him "teacher". Katy zip-lined at My Young Life. Anika was at the airport and saw the modern hero Snoop Dogg/Lion. For those who do not know Snoop Doggy Dogg, he is a rapper who was very good friends with Dr. Dre, and who has also made many appearances in film and online videos (if you're really curious to know what I'm talking about, look up "Moses vs Santa Claus" on YouTube). On a related note, before I get carried away by Snoop Dogg's life, Tuesday tried to conjure up river spirits. Nora went to Belgium and learned how to say "only" in Flemish. Nic went to Virginia and saw civil war reenactments. And most exciting of all, Jinghui ate spaghetti while listening to music. (If i did not mention your name/experience, I am really sorry, I'm just trying to keep this brief, which I realized I failed).
We later had to do a poem analysis on a William Carlos Williams poem called "The Great Figure". All of our hard work was proved to be futile as Ms. Wray showed us (through an epic build up of opening a box to show the true answer of the meaning of the poem) that the poem could mean almost anything as it is interpretive. Mark wisely pointed out that it was like that one scene in Kung Fu Panda, which I won't talk about to not spoil it for those who have not seen the movie.
We went over the class syllabus, which was not overly exciting.
We had to fill out a questionnaire about our reading experiences, and most of us did not finish, so it's homework. And speaking of homework, we need to write vocab sentences for our first vocabulary list for homework. We will also need to bring materials and our summer books to next class.
I'm sorry this is so long.